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THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



Francis and Dominic 

and The Mendicant Orders 
By John Herkless, D.D. 



Previous Volumes in this Series : — 

CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
By A. D. Innes, M.A. 

WESLEY AND METHODISM. 

By F. J. Snell, M.A. 

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 
By Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. 

By Arthur Lillie, M.A. 

WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. 

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 

For Complete List see End, 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



Francis and Dominic 



and 

The Mendicant Orders 



John Herkless, D.D. 

Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of St. Andrews 






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CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

I. INTRODUCTION 
II. ST. FRANCIS .... 

III. ST. FRANCIS .... 

IV. ST. DOMINIC .... 
V. PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS . 

VI. THE MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 
VII. THE MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 
VIII. THE DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS . 



LITERATURE . 



INDEX 



PAGE 
1 

16 

45 
81 
111 
139 
163 
192 
227 
231 



FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 



CHAPTER I 

Introduction 

Medievalism is a record of spiritual, mental, and polit- 
ical slavery ; but it is also the fascinating story of the 
Church's supremacy, of the 'Crusades with their forlorn 
hopes and splendid legends, of the piety which raised 
the Gothic cathedrals, of the universities with their 
weight of learning, of the friars poor for Christ's sake, 
of the scholastics justifying the dogma, of the mystics 
blessed with the vision of God. 

One of the charms of Medievalism is that the stage 
is vast; the chief actors are of epic stature. The 
emperor, Otto the Great or Frederick Barbarossa, was 
pre-eminent among the kings of the Western world : 
the pope, Gregory vn. or Innocent in., was not a 
prisoner of his palace, but was a rival for the sovereign 
place in Europe. Around the emperor was the majesty 
of Rome, while the pope was vested with the sanctity 
of religion. The centuries, however, were furnishing 
the Roman pontiff with temporal splendour. In the 
fourth century Christianity became the recognised 






2 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

religion of the Roman State, and the first Christian 
emperor, having built a city on the Bosphorus, made 
it the centre of his government. Ancient Rome 
was left to its bishops, who step by step advanced to 
prominence in Italy. In the eighth century the Roman 
Church, harassed by the Lombards, called the Franks 
to its aid; and on Christmas Day, 800 A.D., he who 
claimed to be the ecclesiastical heir of St. Peter be- 
stowed the imperial crown on the alleged successor of 
Augustus. Whether the empire of Charlemain was a 
new creation or was a revival or a continuation of that 
of Augustus is a constitutional question ; but whatever 
the answer, it remains that the strongest king in the 
West accepted the symbol of imperial power from the 
hands of a priest of the Church of Christ. 

Charlemain's empire fell to the ground amid the 
divisions of his sons. In the tenth century Otto the 
Great united Germany and Italy, and was crowned 
emperor at Rome. This union, on which the right to 
the imperial title was based, had more than a political 
interest. The theory gained general acceptance that the 
emperor was God's representative in things temporal, 
as the pope was representative in things spiritual. 
Frederick Barbarossa, however, in days when Church 
and State were at strife, used the phrase Holy Roman 
Empire in order to show that his power was not 
derived from the pope but flowed directly from God. 
The phrase, too, though Barbarossa had other intention, 
emphasised the fact that the empire was holy in the 
sense of being an alliance between Church and State. 
This alliance, which had its symbol in the imperial 
coronation by the hands of the Bishop of Rome, was 
one of equality. Yet who was to mark the limits of 



INTRODUCTION 3 

the secular and spiritual, to decree the dominion of 
emperor and pope ? While Otto the Great lived, and 
throughout the period preceding the power of Hilde- 
brand, the Church was in subjection. It was the ideal 
of that pope, and he did not altogether fail, to destroy 
the subjection, to establish the supremacy of the Church 
over all causes, and to exalt the Bishop of Rome to 
universal dominion. 

It has been told of Hildebrand that in his precocious 
childhood he played with wood-chips in his father's 
shop, arranging them as the letters of " dominabor a 
mari usque ad mare," " I shall have dominion from sea 
to sea," and that in the famous monastery of Cluny 
the abbot applied the words to him, as to another John 
the Baptist, " He shall be great in the sight of the 
Lord." His dominion was not to stretch from sea to 
sea, but the policy to which he gave his name was to 
endure for centuries. Throughout the period of his 
youth the papacy was not elevated by virtue or graced 
by piety, and its inheritance was an evil reputation. 
Among the popes there had been men who purchased 
the tiara or seized it by force of arms ; and there had 
been others who were deposed, exiled, or murdered. 
Two women of noble name and infamous repute had 
placed their lovers in St. Peter s chair ; while a boy of 
twelve and a youth of eighteen had each been vicar of 
the Apostle. If Charlemain stooped from royal dignity 
to receive a crown from an ecclesiastic, he was avenged 
when the Emperor Henry in. cast out the rival popes 
at Sutri, and forced the Roman priests to accept a bishop 
from his hands. 

In the eyes of Hildebrand, in spite of any theory 
of the divine right of kings, Henry in. was not com- 



4 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

missioned to touch the Lord's anointed ; and another 
method, different from imperial coercion, must be found 
for the purification of the Church. No layman, how- 
ever exalted, must tamper with spiritual independ- 
ence. Yet reformation was needed, as Hildebrand saw, 
who had been trained in the severe morality of the 
monastery of Cluny. Monkish methods of revival 
were to hand. As the monk, when keeping the spirit 
of his vow, had cut himself off from the corrupting 
control of the things of time, that he might govern his 
soul to its eternal welfare, so must the Church separate 
from the world if it would rule mankind. The first 
thing to be destroyed was simony. The priest who 
purchased and the layman who sold, they who 
brought the things of religion into the market-place 
for traffic, were to be pronounced guilty of sin. And 
the priest himself, through celibacy, must be kept from 
the world. If the Church was to be triumphant, its 
servants must be free from the joys and cares of ^earth. 
No priest should have wife and children to divert his 
love from Christ, capturing his time, and tempting him 
to seek wealth for their support. The custom, too, of 
lay investiture must cease. The ring and staff, symbols 
of initiation into dignified ecclesiastical offices, were be- 
stowed by lay hands, and usually for gold. No theory, 
however specious, that the practice was simply a feudal 
arrangement where churchmen held lands, would 
satisfy Hildebrand. He would not have the ark of 
the Church touched by a layman's hand, and the 
custom must cease in order that a gross evil might be 
removed and spiritual independence be established. 

The monastery of Cluny, having set its own house 
in order, could honestly command and require a general 



INTRODUCTION 5 

monastic reformation. Hildebrand went further when 
he made freedom from the world an ideal for all clerics 
alike. Cut off from secular interests, they would yield 
obedience to none but their superiors, and thus the 
autonomy of the Church would be established. Priests 
had their bishops, and bishops their supreme pontiff, to 
instruct and guide them. Asceticism and obedience 
would bring to pass that kingdom of God which the 
gospel had promised, and which Augustine, with the 
unity of Imperial Rome before him, had pictured ; and 
in this kingdom the pope would be the vice-gerent of 
Christ, in this universal Church His vicar. Let ecclesi- 
astics be freed from the world and the divine kingdom 
would come, wherein earthly interests would yield to 
spiritual concerns. The Hildebrandine policy had for 
its aim the removal of secular control from the Church, 
in order that it might have liberty and then supremacy; 
and to secure this end, the asceticism and obedience of 
clerics were required. With temporary and partial 
success, but with unrelenting vigour, Hildebrand 
opposed the simony which everywhere was working 
harm. In his crusade against clerical marriage he was 
victor in so far as celibacy was established or renewed 
as a law, though not till the Reformation did decency 
become the general custom of priestly life. The strife 
over investitures was more than a question of spiritual 
independence : it was the duel between pope and em- 
peror for supremacy. During the youth of the emperor, 
Henry iv., the German clergy were being brought into 
obedience to Rome ; but reaching manhood, he deter- 
mined to strike a blow for national freedom. No 
Italian bishop should rule his clergy, and his own 
obedience would not be given to Hildebrand. Henry's 



6 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

stroke was met by a counter-stroke, against which he 
could not stand : " For the honour and security of the 
Church, in the name of the Almighty Triune God, I do 
prohibit Henry, king, son of Henry the emperor, from 
ruling the kingdom of the Teutons and of Italy, and I 
release all Christians from the oath of allegiance to 
him which they have taken, or shall take." The words 
were a declaration of the right of the Bishop of Rome 
to dispose of political causes ; and for this supremacy 
all other concerns, even piety itself, were sacrificed. 
The supremacy was no mere semblance of power. 
Hadrian iv., the poor scholar who had wandered from 
England to Rome, trafficked in the islands of the sea, 
and gave Ireland to Henry II., king of a land where he, 
Nicholas Brakspere, had been a beggar. Innocent ill., 
receiving the crown of England from John, returned 
it to him as his vassal. In the century after Francis 
and Dominic had adopted poverty, Boniface VIII., cloth- 
ing himself in imperial garments, claimed the title of 
emperor, as some have it, and, of a truth, ruined the 
papacy that he might be more than a bishop. 

Medieval Church policy meant supremacy in things 
spiritual and temporal, and for this policy Hildebrand 
was mainly responsible. In his strife with Henry the 
stroke and the counter-stroke were followed by the 
tragic scene of Canossa. Of the great pope it can be 
said, indeed, that he put down the mighty from his seat. 
With heavy step Henry climbed to the mountain for- 
tress of Canossa. For three days, standing barefooted 
on the snow, and clad in a coarse woollen shirt, Henry, 
son of an emperor, himself the uncrowned Emperor of 
Rome, sought admission to Hildebrand, the son of a 
carpenter of Savona. When at last he entered the 



INTRODUCTION 7 

presence of the pope, it was to throw himself on the 
ground, saying : " Spare me, holy father, — spare me/' 
Hildebrancl had triumphed, but the day of triumph 
was short. Christendom was not prepared to accept 
the rule of a priest. His last words, when he lay dying 
at Salerno, are well known : " I have loved righteous- 
ness and hated iniquity — therefore I die in exile " ; 
and significant was the reply of one of the cardinals : 
" Nay, in exile thou canst not die, who as vicar of 
Christ and His apostles hast received the utmost parts 
of the earth for thy possession." The reply was indeed 
significant: it gave voice to the aspiration of the 
Roman Church. 

The Hildebrandine policy, at its best, was an attempt 
to save the Church from the evils of feudalism, and to 
secure the domination of religion. Let the Medieval 
Church be viewed in its place in the midst of an ignor- 
ant, enslaved, and unspiritual people, governed by kings 
and nobles, selfish and cruel, and Hildebrand may be 
counted an ecclesiastical reformer seeking to remove 
pollution, and justified as an autocrat who enforced 
religion. 

The kingdom of God did not come through asceticism 
and obedience. Simony was checked but not stopped. 
A suspicion has arisen, but it is nothing more, that 
Hildebrand desired the traffic in livings to pass into 
the hands of the popes. The celibacy of the clergy, 
which has roused the wrath of moralists, was not alien 
to the ethical ideals of the time, and the system gave 
to the Church an army for religion. The abolition of 
lay investiture, the freedom of the clergy from the 
slavery imposed by feudal masters, was the only hope 
of the unity of the Church. The Hildebrandine policy, 



8 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

in so far as it meant the spiritual independence of an 
institution existing for the promotion of religion, was 
of value, and the methods employed to realise it har- 
monised with the recognised moral ideas. But it had 
its worldly side, even in the case of Hildebrand him- 
self, and in the age of Innocent ill., and notably of 
Boniface VIII., that side was prominent. Thus into the 
Church there came a worldly ideal, a dream of earthly 
supremacy, a vision of absolute political power, with 
the pope ruling kings as puppets. 

During the reign of Innocent III., in which the 
Church reached its height of worldly success, Francis 
and Dominic appeared. It was indeed a comprehen- 
sive religion which produced Innocent and Francis, a 
Catholic Church which included that king of kings 
and that poorest of beggars who would not have a 
place of his own whereon to lay his head. From 
Hildebrand to Innocent the Church had been stead- 
fast, with varied success, in its purpose of supremacy. 
At the close of the eleventh century the first Crusade 
was proclaimed, and in the effusion of piety Urban II. 
was recognised as the head of Christendom, attaining a 
dignity never awarded to Hildebrand himself. When 
the enthusiasm for the holy places of the East died 
away, the Church returned to its strife for power. 
There was one man, Paschal II., who would have yielded 
all the Church's possessions, save the patrimony of St. 
Peter, and would have secured ecclesiastical freedom 
by rendering to Caesar the things which Caesar 
claimed. 

A priestly tumult arose. Paschal, however, was 
more alarmed by the presence of the German hosts, 
and accordingly surrendered to Henry V. the right of 



INTRODUCTION 9 

investiture, bestowing at the same time the imperial 
crown. The Church, on the other hand, having entered 
into possession of a definite policy, would not, in spite 
of its pope, betray its trust, yielding what its fanati- 
cism cherished as its divine right. Under Calixtus II. 
its triumph came; and, through stress of anathema 
and excommunication, Henry agreed to the concordat of 
Worms, abandoning his title to invest with ecclesias- 
tical symbol, and giving, according to priestly inter- 
pretation, to God the things that were God's. 

In the middle of the twelfth century the State, in 
its opposition to the Church, gained a champion in 
Frederick Barbarossa, great as the king of his people 
and to be mourned as their military hero. Hadrian IV. 
was the ardent representative of Hildebrandism, against 
whom Frederick maintained that the imperial dignity, 
neither the gift nor the creation of the Church, was in 
itself divine. For emphasis of this theory he neglected 
a custom said to have been begun by Constantine the 
Great, refusing to hold the pope's stirrup, or touching 
the left instead of the right. It was Frederick's en- 
deavour to establish in Italy a German power which 
would control the Church, but in his campaign he had 
to meet more than the strength of the Bishop of Rome. 
French and English gold secured the opposition of 
the Roman people; and in the north of Italy the 
Lombard cities embraced the papal cause, eager to 
secure their independence from imperial domination. 
Barbarossa failed, without forfeiture of military re- 
nown, since he could not fight against the plague which 
devastated his army and drove him over the Alps. 
At Legnano, after an alliance between the pope and 
the Lombard cities, Frederick was defeated ; and later, 



io FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

at a meeting in Venice, the emperor did not refuse 
to Pope Alexander III. that courtesy which he had 
denied to Hadrian. 

The empire under Barbarossa could not regain the 
control over the Church which Otto the Great and 
Henry III. had exercised, before Hildebrand arose with 
his cry of spiritual independence ; and yet if ever there 
was a hope of recovering that supremacy, it lived when 
Frederick Barbarossa reigned. He died in his march 
to the East as a Crusader, and his Germans promised 
themselves that he would come again. None worthier 
came to wear the imperial crown, and none so re- 
nowned ; but a great pope, Innocent III., was yet to 
frustrate his policy and to gain that political dominion 
which was the hope of all the Bishops of Rome. 

While the papacy was rising to its height new 
monastic Orders were founded, which drew the pious 
out of the ways of the world. The Camaldolese, 
Vallombrosians, Carthusians, and Cistercians, to take 
examples, marked a monastic revival. St. Bernard, 
the most distinguished of the Cistercians, was at 
once the pious recluse, the popular preacher, and 
the ruler of the Church. The crusade inaugurated 
by Urban u. had quickened the religious sentiment 
.of Christendom, as the holy places had called up the 
image of the suffering Christ. Bernard was strongly 
affected by this sentiment, and the Crucified became 
the object of his mystic contemplation. In his mon- 
astic life he practised poverty in a fashion to which 
the older Orders were strangers, but the poverty was 
joined to the severe routine of the cloister. When he 
preached, the intensity of his piety touched the hearts 
of the people ; and more than other monk or priest of 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

the twelfth century he fostered religion. Yet with the 
cause of religion he identified the cause of the Church, 
and no disparity was suggested by him between Christ 
and His reputed representative on the papal throne. 
He laboured for the Church, silencing Abelard, crushing 
Arnold of Brescia, and directing Innocent n. These 
labours, however, did not impede his mission among 
the people, and his poverty and his piety made him the 
accepted evangelist of the century before Francis and 
Dominic. 

In the year 1198, Cardinal Lothair ascended the 
papal throne as Innocent in. The son of an Italian 
noble of the anti-imperialist party, the nephew of a 
pope, Lothair rose to the dignity of cardinal at the 
age of twenty-eight. During a retirement from Rome, 
when Coelestine in. was pope, he wrote a treatise 
styled, " Contempt of the World and the Misery of 
Human Life," displaying a monastic spirit which might 
have made a saint of him had he not been raised to 
the high place of dominion. Called to rule, he was 
ready for a task which required not the enthusiasm 
of a monk but the wisdom of a statesman. Disorder 
was rampant in the nations, and the golden opportunity 
had come for the Church, which had in Innocent its 
strongest man since Hildebrand. In the empire Inno- 
cent played with the rivalry of Otto of Brunswick and 
Philip of Swabia, and changed German history at 
his will by placing on the imperial stage the heir of 
the Hohenstaufen, the future Frederick II. In France 
Innocent appeared as the guardian of morality and the 
saviour of the oppressed. Philip Augustus had put 
away Ingeburga, his Danish wife, in whose conduct 
there was no cause for a divorce. The French clergy 



12 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

had granted divorce, and the queen had appealed to 
Rome. Pope Coelestine had quailed before the haughti- 
ness of Philip, but Innocent was a different man, and 
in him the French king and clergy alike found a 
master. The nation was placed under interdict, so 
that the offices of religion ceased. The king was 
compelled to send away his beloved Agnes of Meran, 
and to take back the despised and injured Ingeburga. 
In England, in the conflict of tyranny and freedom, 
King John resigned his crown, to receive it back 
as a vassal of the pope. In the south of France, 
during the crusade against the heretics, Innocent 
made his name terrible, displaying stern and unre- 
lenting vigour. The crusade to the East which he 
inaugurated failed to place Christianity victorious 
over its Mohammedan foes ; but it seated a Latin king 
and established a Latin Church in Constantinople. 
Neither kingdom nor church was to endure, yet both 
continued beyond the limit of his reign and increased 
the splendour of his rule. The kings of Portugal, Leon, 
and Aragon each owned his sovereign power, which 
was extended over Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. 
Throughout the whole Church the Bishop of Rome 
was supreme ; and Rome itself was now recognised 
as the court of appeal for the ecclesiastics of all 
lands. 

The day for the assembling of the Fourth Lateran 
Council, 1215, was the day of the Church's triumph. 
Representatives of the emperors of the East and West, 
Eastern patriarchs, Western bishops, made a cloud of 
witnesses to the commanding power of Innocent, and 
to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. When 
Innocent first ascended the papal throne these words 



INTRODUCTION 13 

were used in the inauguration sermon : " Ye see what 
manner of servant that is whom the Lord hath set over 
His people ; no other than the vice-gerent of Christ, 
the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst between 
God and man : below God, above man ; less than God, 
more than man. He judges all, is judged by none ; for 
it is written, I will judge. But he whom the pre- 
eminence of dignity exalts is lowered by his office of 
a servant, that so humility may be exalted and pride 
abased ; for God is against the high-minded, and to the 
lowly He shows mercy; and he who exalteth himself shall 
be abased." The pope thus introduced did not scruple 
to change the text of the Vulgate in order to gain a 
biblical sanction for his official power over life and 
death. He taught, too, with Hildebrand, that the royal 
dignity is to the papal as the moon to the sun, from 
which it gets its light ; and he also used the simile of 
the body and the soulr It was he who claimed possession 
of the two swords, symbols of civil and ecclesiastical 
power ; and from his reign till the present the pope 
has been styled the vicar of Christ, not simply the vicar 
of St. Peter. At the Lateran Council, addressing the 
multitude of clerics, the pope took for his own use the 
words, "With desire I have desired to eat this pass- 
over with you before I suffer." It seemed as if he felt 
that his own end was near, or knew that the day of 
the Church's triumph would soon be spent. But that 
day might well have appeared to others the noon- 
time of a glory that would never pass. Rome was 
the centre of the Church : its bishop the head 
of Christendom, the lord of kings, the master of 
peoples. 

Rome had conquered, yet the victory was gained at 



14 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the expense of religion, as the innumerable sectaries 
showed who sought guidance beyond the Church, and 
listened to a gospel no priest would proclaim. Heresy- 
was rampant, because the Church had turned from 
Christ to the world, and her servants had not gone 
forth into the highways and byways of Christendom, 
to teach the people the orthodox creed and to lead them 
into truth. Innocent himself was not ignorant of the 
perversion of the Church, and when the mendicants 
appeared and offered, though they were not all priests, 
to instruct the people in the knowledge of the Bible 
and the doctrines of theology, he did not seek to crush 
them, but retained them as obedient servants. Thus 
it happened that when religion was impotent in the 
hearts of the people, the friars arose and stirred it into 
life and strength ; and when the Church was a worldly 
institution and her priests had departed from the spirit 
of Christ, these friars devoted themselves to the 
missionary labour to which He had consecrated Him- 
self. Their ideal was noble, their aim the loftiest, 
while yet they retained the zeal and piety of their 
founders ; but ere many years had passed after their 
recognition as Orders, the Church succeeded in binding 
them to her own worldly uses. Rome profited by their 
•foundation. Her dominion over the ecclesiastics of 
any land might perish through the combination of a 
national clergy ; but such a combination, she saw, was 
little likely to be formed if the mendicants who had 
broken worldly ties acted as her emissaries. Her 
political power might suffer with the death of the 
great pope to whom the earth seemed given for a 
possession ; but it might be saved if the mendicants, 
wandering in all countries, preached the gospel of 



INTRODUCTION 15 

papal supremacy Many were the offices of the friars. 
They spread throughout the world, filling the seats of 
learning, attaining ecclesiastical pre-eminence, serving 
as directors of kings, acting as instructors of the people ; 
now reviving religion, now quickening church life, and 
preserving for Borne a semblance at least of that power 
which Hildebrand had sought and Innocent wielded, 
retaining for her a fragment of that domain which 
the one had seen in vision and the other had beheld 
extending from sea to sea. 



CHAPTER II 

St Francis 

In the year 1182 — the exact date is uncertain — a child 
was born who was to be known as St. Francis of Assisi. 
The father of the boy was Pietro Bernardone, a pros- 
perous cloth merchant. Little has been learned of the 
mother, Pica, who bore her son while her husband was 
absent on one of his commercial travels; but the 
association of Francis in early manhood with the 
young nobles of Assisi, his knowledge of French, and 
his saintly character and purpose, suggestive at least of 
the customs and ideals of the Poor Men of Lyons, have 
made the assertion plausible, that she was of a noble 
family of Provence. The scenery, climate, and vegeta- 
tion of Umbria, in which Assisi lies, were at once 
grand and charming influences which touched the 
youth and manhood of the poet saint. At his baptism 
the child received the name of John, which the father 
afterwards changed to Francis, very likely through 
fondness for France, to which his business often led 
him. According to another version, the name was 
given because of the facility with which the boy 
acquired the French tongue ; while another theory has 
it that the man of business intended a compliment to 
his French wife. All through his life that tongue was 
dear to Francis by its poetic associations, as it was the 

16 



ST. FRANCIS 17 

language of the Troubadours, whose songs enchanted 
his youth and lingered in his memory. Tradition has 
not failed to tell of miracles surrounding the infancy 
of the boy, in order to mark a likeness to the fabled 
childhood of Christ. Francis received the education 
given to children of rich parents, and, meagre though it 
was, it secured for him a knowledge of Latin sufficient 
to make him understand the ritual of the Church, and 
love its hymns, which he was wont to sing by the 
wayside. When the school education was finished he 
joined his father in business, and came into contact 
with the merchants who sold and the poor who bought. 
At the same time, in spite of trade, the youth was 
received by the sons of the nobles of the place, who 
were willing to have a companion with the money 
which the ambition of Pietro Bernardone supplied. 
Thus Francis led the life of a trader and of a young 
man of fashion, of fashion embracing prodigality and 
perhaps licentiousness, yet saved from coarseness and 
vulgarity by the leaven of the Troubadours, who were 
then making for refinement in Italy. Companies of 
youths would band together to sing the light Pro- 
vengal songs and to follow the gay practices of the 
Troubadours, and occasionally Francis, with his sweet 
and flexible voice, was a chosen leader. The songs, 
however, were not always light, but sometimes were 
touched by piety or inspired by the noble deeds of 
heroes. His education in the school of the Trouba- 
dours, more than the education of the Church's school, 
prepared him for the wandering life of poverty in 
which his love to Christ had a lyric sweetness and his 
actions for men had often the character of romance. 
Associated with nobles though he was, Francis took 



1 8 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the popular side in a contest of the people against the 
aristocrats. He was no mere man of fashion afraid of 
the sword ; no mere hanger-on to men of rich degree, 
prepared through right and wrong ever to defend their 
cause. He was ready to use the sword, and used it in 
a war between Perugia and his own city when Assisi 
joined in the struggle for freedom from German rule. 
Taken captive, he was led to Perugia, where he was 
confined for a year in a prison, the site of which is now 
occupied by the palace of the Capitano del Popolo. In 
that prison pious forces may have worked in his soul, 
yet on his return to Assisi he pursued his old ways, till 
struck down by illness. On his recovery he arranged 
to go with a certain knight of Assisi who was setting 
forth to fight, along with Walter of Brienne, on the 
pope's side against the imperialists. Military life, not 
alien to a character inspired by the better and heroic 
verses of the Troubadours, was now his ideal. Prepara- 
tions were made in magnificent style, and he marched 
forth in pomp. At Spoleto, however, he was struck 
down with fever, and his career as a soldier was ended. 
Returning home he changed his manner of life.. In 
vain his friends sought to win him back to their 
pleasures. One day, taunted as a youth in love, he 
declared : " I am thinking of taking a wife more 
beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever 
imagine." This, some affirm, was religion ; others more 
truly say that it w;as the Lady Poverty whom his 
sentimental imagination so styled, and whom Dante has 
wedded to his name. The chevalier must have a lady 
for his devotion ; and Francis, who had not cut himself 
off from all his former fancies, was to take Poverty as 
the lady of his heart. His love of poverty was not, 



ST. FRANCIS 19 

however, at once made known ; and if this story of his 
taking a wife is true, it may be accepted that neither 
sudden impulse nor unexpected revelation, but calm 
deliberation, led him to the mendicant life. 
Thus Dante sang of him — 

" For he, a youth, his father's wrath did dare 

For maid, for whom not one of all the crowd, 
As she were death, would pleasure's gates unbar. 

And then before court spiritual he vowed, 
Et coram patre — marriage-pledge to her, 

And day by day more fervent love he showed. 
Of her first spouse bereaved, a thousand were, 

And more, the years she lived, despised, obscure, 
And till he came, none did his suit prefer. 

But lest I tell it too obscurely so, 

By these two lovers, in my speech diffuse, 
Thou Poverty and Francis now may'st know." ' 

Giotto, in a fresco in Assisi, has shown Francis placing 
the ring on the finger of his bride, who, though 
crowned with roses, is dressed in poor garments, and 
has her feet bruised with stones and torn with briars. 
After the illness at Spoleto, and the retiral from 
military service, the religious conversion of Francis 
was in progress. What was the influence of these 
events on his character cannot be told, as the history 
of his conversion can be but dimly traced. He went to 
Rome, and was disappointed. The faithful gave but 
little, even at the shrine of the apostles. He himself 
would be splendid in his charity, as he had been in his 
gaiety, and he emptied his purse as a pious gift to 
St. Peter. In the papal city he saw a multitude of 
beggars, and the sight suggested an experiment. From 
one of them he borrowed his rags, lending him his own 



20 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

garments, and stood for a day as a mendicant, that he 
might enter into the secret of poverty. Experience 
was not slow to help him in his pious progress. One 
day he met a leper, and in repulsion turned away. 
But seized by remorse, he hastened to kiss the loath- 
some hand and pour out his money. Legend has 
touched this story. The leper vanished, and then 
Francis, like Sir Launfal in " The Vision," knew that 
he had ministered unto Christ. 

" And the voice that was calmer than silence said, 
' Lo, it is I, be not afraid.' " 

Soon afterwards Francis entered a leper home as a 
visitor, to carry sympathy to the victims of disease 
whom society had banished from its midst. He would 
discipline himself to the hardest duty, and it was no 
easy task to which he gave himself. " The excellent 
reader," says Heine, " does not require to be told how 
terrible a complaint was leprosy in the Middle Ages, 
and how the poor wretches who had this incurable 
plague were banished from society, and had to keep at 
a distance from any human being. Like living corpses, 
in a grey gown reaching down to the feet, and with 
the hood brought over their face, they went about, 
carrying in their hands an enormous rattle, called Saint 
Lazarus's rattle. With this rattle they gave notice of 
their approach, that every one might have time to get 
out of their way." 

Leprosy had spread in Italy and other countries of 
the West, especially after the return of the Crusaders. 
Medical science was powerless, and the afflicted were 
ostracised, and too often there was no one to tend their 
bodies and none to heed their souls. Francis, following 



ST. FRANCIS 21 

Christ, required no other example to draw him to the 
lepers, though he may have heard that the Poor Men 
of Lyons had not forgotten them. His humanity 
inspired him to seek the outcasts, and his piety traced 
in them the divine image, their foul disease notwith- 
standing. In his Testament he declared when dying: 
" When I was in the bondage of sin it was bitter to me 
and loathsome to see and look upon persons infected 
with leprosy, but that blessed Lord brought me among 
them, and I did mercy with them ; and when I 
departed from them, what seemed bitter and loath- 
some was turned and changed to me into great sweetness 
and comfort both of body and soul/' According to 
the Speculum Vita3, it was ordained " that the friars 
of his Order, dispersed in various parts of the world, 
should for the love of Christ diligently attend the 
lepers wherever they could be found " ; and these 
friars, urging sanitation, and exhibiting medical skill, 
helped to remove the curse from Europe. One of his 
first acts, after his adoption of poverty as the way of 
life, was to visit the leper house to which he had gone 
when his apparel was rich. Now he went in poverty. 
He tended the lepers for a time, and rejoiced that he 
had found something to do for Christ's sake. 

The crisis of his religious conversion was reached, 
according to one story, on a day when he was praying 
before a crucifix in the poor Church of St. Damian. 
The Christ of the cross seemed to be alive and to say 
that He accepted the service offered in his prayer: 
" Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I may act 
only in accordance with Thy holy will." Difficulties 
now arose with his father, but he desired to leave all 
and follow Christ in poverty, humility, and love. 



22 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Stripped of all his possessions, for he had given back 
to his angry father even his very clothes, he went out 
into the world with nothing but old garments which 
had been given him in charity. This was the turning 
point of his life : thus did he answer the call of Christ. 
He entered into no cloister, but went out into the 
world for Christ's sake, and was as poor as He was. 
Poverty did not disconcert him : it was the badge of 
his service, and as he walked on the roads round Assisi 
he sang as one who served in joy. 

His first refuge was with the priest of St. Damian. 
Legend tells that as he prayed in the church a voice 
said, " Go repair my house which is falling into ruin/' 
and that he took the words as a command to restore 
the ruined chapel in which he knelt, heedless of the 
great Catholic Church then sinking into spiritual 
desolation. Obedient to his heavenly vision, he set 
about the work of repair. He had some skill in build- 
ing, but having no materials he begged for stones for 
the pious labour. At the same time he had nothing to 
eat, and he asked for bread. The broken bread which 
he received was his sacrament of poverty. Other 
ruined churches demanded his attention, and on one 
of those he laboured, the Church of Santa Maria of the 
Portiuncula, which, under the name of Santa Maria 
degli Angeli, became the cradle of Franciscanism. 

The legend of this church is extremely fanciful. 
Originally known as the Church of S. Maria di 
Josaphat, it was founded by four pilgrims from 
Jerusalem who carried with them, a fragment of the 
tomb of the Virgin in the valley of Jehosaphat, and a 
part of one of her garments. In 516 it was rebuilt by 
St. Benedict, who changed its name to Portiuncula, and 



ST. FRANCIS 23 

afterwards to S. Maria degli Angeli, as angels came 
and sang in it. Another legend tells how the name 
Portiuncula was given to an indulgence famous in the 
Catholic Church. One night Francis learned by 
revelation that Christ and the Virgin waited him in 
this church. Christ told him that He would grant 
a boon for the salvation of men, and the request was 
thereupon made that those who entered the Portiun- 
cula should obtain pardon for all sins confessed to a 
priest, and for which penance had been done. At the 
intercession of the Virgin, Christ consented, with the 
provision that the pope should signify agreement. 
Pope Honorius, after making certain modifications, 
notably the restriction of it to one day, lest the 
indulgences for the Holy Land should be injured, 
gave his consent ; and the indulgence was afterwards 
extended to other churches. Thus did Francis with 
his consecration to poverty become the agent, according 
to this legend, through whom a valuable revenue was 
secured for his Order. The first biographers of the 
saint are silent regarding this episode, and the Bollan- 
dists speak of it with caution. In recent years, how- 
ever, attention has been paid to a writing of a French- 
man, Jacques de Vitry, who, being in Perugia when 
Innocent III. died, described the election of Honorius in., 
a simple and benevolent man who had bestowed almost 
all his goods on the poor. Saddened by the worldliness 
of the papal Court, the Frenchman found comfort in 
beholding the Friars Minor, whom the pope and car- 
dinals treated with respect. From the character of 
Honorius and Francis it is not unreasonable to believe 
that they arranged an indulgence unburdened with a 
condition of alms. The saint, finding in the pope a 



J 



24 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

man after his own heart, and desiring to give penitents 
an outward sign of divine forgiveness, may have 
obtained from him the sanction of an indulgence for 
which no price was to be paid. Attention, even to the 
present day, is directed to the question of Francis' 
share in obtaining this indulgence, and controversy 
has arisen. The tendency, however, is to accept the 
statements, made in certain documents of the latter 
part of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth 
century, that the indulgence was established at the 
request of Francis. 

Nothing in the conduct of Francis pointed as yet 
to missionary enterprise, or to the foundation of a 
Brotherhood or Order. In Portiuncula, however, he 
was to receive the call to his missionary labour, and it 
came to him as if directly from the lips of Christ Him- 
self. One day, it was the year 1209, he heard the 
priest at mass reading, but it was Christ who seemed 
to say that he should go and preach, healing the sick, 
cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, and casting out 
devils, and that he should provide neither gold nor 
silver, nor brass, nor scrip, nor shoes, nor staves. This 
was the formal commission for Francis for his labour 
and his poverty ; and when he received it he cast aside 
staff and shoes and began to preach, or rather to speak 
to the people words of religion. For two years he had 
been preparing for his mission by renunciation of the 
things of the world, and he who had left all to follow 
Christ had a right to ask others to go with him. 
Francis entered upon his mission not as a novice in 
piety, but as one having authority. 

True to his ideal, Francis adopted as his dress the 
brown woollen gown, tied with a rope, which the 



ST. FRANCIS 25 

poorest men of the district wore, and he walked bare- 
footed. Eccleston tells of one of the friars in England, 
that without permission he put on sandals to go to 
matins. He dreamt that he was taken by robbers, 
who cried, " Kill him ! kill him ! " " But I am a friar," 
was the plea. " Thou liest," said the robbers, " for 
thou art not barefooted." In another of the English 
Chronicles it is related that one Christmas time two 
of the friars, returning from a chapter at Oxford, sang 
as they " picked their way along the rugged path over 
the frozen mud and rigid snow, whilst the blood lay in 
the track of their naked feet, without their being 
conscious of it." Dante gives us a picture showing 
how the Brothers walked — 

" Silent, alone, with no companions near, 

We journeyed, one before and one behind, 
(So Minor Friars when they walk appear).' 5 

One by one converts were made who joined Francis 
as brothers in poverty. He wished, however, to found 
no Order. He simply desired men to follow the life 
of Christ in its humility, and he preached Christ and 
Him crucified to the world. A notable convert was 
made when Bernardo di Quintavalle, a rich man of 
Assisi, distributed his wealth among the poor. His 
story is told in the Little Flowers. Touched by the 
patience of Francis, he invited him to sup and lodge 
with him, and he set himself to observe his sanctity. 
Assured of that sanctity, he resolved to renounce the 
world, and made known his purpose. " Bernard," was 
the reply, "this that thou sayest is a task so great 
and difficult that therefore must we seek counsel of 
our Lord Jesus Christ." Together they went to the 



26 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

bishop's house, where there was a good priest, who at 
the bidding of Francis made the sign of the cross, and 
opened the missal thrice in the name of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. At the first opening appeared the words: 
"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, 
and give to the poor and follow me " ; at the second, 
these : " Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, 
nor scrip, neither bread, neither money " ; and at the 
third : " If any man will come after me, let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Then 
Bernard went and sold all his possessions and gave the 
price to the poor. Among other converts was one who 
resigned a canonry in the cathedral ; and when these 
men numbered seven, or twelve, according to the 
Little Flowers, Francis sent them forth two by two 
to preach the gospel, that he might imitate the action 
of Christ. 

A Brotherhood or association had been formed, not 
an Order in the strict sense, and some Rule must be 
formulated or adopted. The words which had been 
accepted by Francis as a commission would serve as 
the basis of a Rule for the Brothers. Reading them 
aloud, he said : " Brothers, this is the life and the rule 
for us, and for all who may desire to join us. Go and 
do as you have heard." Portiuncula, which had been 
granted for their use, was the centre from which the 
new preachers went forth on their mission, and yet it 
was hardly a centre, as there was no house attached to 
the church to shelter them as a home. They possessed 
nothing, neither as individuals nor as a Brotherhood, 
and like children careless of the day wandered about, 
now singing in their joy, now teaching or preaching. 
A day's work would be wrought, and when no man 



ST. FRANCIS 27 

gave them work they would beg and not be ashamed. 
Penitents of Assisi they called themselves ; sometimes, 
Joculatores Domini, God's Jongleurs. With them divine 
science and the gay science were akin. The Brother- 
hood increased to twelve, says one tradition, the number 
of the disciples, and then it was determined that the 
Rule should be written out and submitted to the pope. 
That Rule has not been preserved, though attempts have 
been made from various writings to piece it together. 

Francis, with certain brethren, set out for Rome to 
present the Rule to Innocent. The story, as told by 
Bonaventura, is that Innocent, walking on the terrace of 
the Lateran, saw the preachers, who seemed to be poor 
peasants, approach to kneel at his feet, and despising 
their rags bade them depart. The sovereign of the kings 
of the earth could have no fellowship with beggars. 
But at night the pope dreamed that a palm sprouted 
between his feet, reaching to a great height ; and when 
he awoke he connected his vision with the poor men, 
as a prophecy of their future distinction. Another 
version is that Innocent beheld the great Church of St. 
John Lateran falling to the ground, and that suddenly 
it was supported by the beggar whom he had in the 
daytime actually spurned from him. This dream, we 
are told, was repeated when Dominic presented himself 
to the pope. A later legend has it that Francis, in the 
papal presence, related a parable, how a king had sons 
by a poor woman, whom he afterwards recognised as 
his children. This parable could not have been told by 
Francis, since it represented the clergy as the illeg- 
itimate sons of the pope. The meeting of Francis and 
Innocent has dramatic and historic significance, and 
there is little wonder that Giotto set it forth in one 



28 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of his famous frescoes. The painter has represented 
Innocent, seated on the throne, turning wondering eyes 
on the strangers, who are craving permission to live 
after the humility and poverty of Christ. 

In Rome Francis unexpectedly met the Bishop of 
Assisi, who, favouring his cause, commended him to 
the Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo. The cardinal in 
turn, after much talk with Francis, introduced him to 
the pope, saying, in the words of the legend : " I have 
found a most perfect man, who desires to live according 
to the holy gospel, and in all things to observe evan- 
gelical perfection; by whom, I believe, the Lord pur- 
poses to reform the faith of the Holy Church throughout 
all the world." Whatever the details of the Rule were, 
as presented to Innocent, they were in substance the 
precepts of Christ, adopted in Portiuncula for the 
guidance of the Brotherhood. The pope, however, was 
too grave in experience to be captured by mere en- 
thusiasm, and while probably satisfied with the sincerity 
of the Penitents of Assisi, he neither condemned nor 
accepted the Rule. No new Order was created, but the 
pope, leaving the mission of the Brothers to justify 
itself, required them to choose a superior. One man, 
and one only, could guide the Penitents, and Francis 
became the first superior, though, according to another 
story, they had, before reaching Rome, elevated Brother 
Bernard to be to them as a vicar of Christ's. The 
interview with Innocent was over, and ere they de- 
parted for Umbria they received the tonsure, which 
transformed them into clerics. The Waldenses had 
refused the tonsure, and so were rejected as heretics. 
The Penitents of Assisi did not commit the blunder of 
separating from the Church. 



ST. FRANCIS 29 

Innocent III. hesitated to sanction the organisation 
which Francis had intentionally or unintentionally 
formed. In the Lateran Council of 1215 it was 
determined, since there was danger to the unity of 
the Church, that no new Orders should be instituted; 
and probably this policy was finding favour even as 
early as the year 1210, as Wadding has it, when 
Francis presented himself at Rome. 

Coelestine III. in 1196 sanctioned the foundation of 
an Order by Joachim of Flora, the mystic whose 
writings were to influence the history of the Fran- 
ciscans. Joachim, a son of noble parents, left his home 
in order to visit the holy places of the East. In Con- 
stantinople he was touched by the spectacle of the 
horrors of a plague, and, having dismissed his servants, 
proceeded on his way as a pilgrim. Visions revealed 
to him mysteries of religion. When he returned 
to the West he became a Cistercian, but not satisfied 
with the severities of his monkish life, he founded a 
new Order, in which extreme poverty was to be 
practised. 

Innocent himself welcomed back to the fold of the 
Church Durand of Huesca, who separated from the Wal- 
denses that he might found an Order of mendicants 
within the Church. That Order, the Poor Catholics 
they were styled, included priests who desired by 
preaching to convert heretics, and laymen who through 
poverty sought to restore apostolic simplicity. Having 
approved the action of the Poor Catholics, Innocent, 
none the less, kept back his sanction from the Penitents 
of Assisi. It is not probable that he hesitated to recog- 
nise the preaching of laymen, which could have been 
controlled : it is more likely that he doubted the value 



3 o FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of aggressive poverty, while understanding the worth 
of fanaticism. He might well judge the profession of 
absolute poverty too extreme for the individual and for 
the Order, and too extravagant to attract, even though 
he himself had written the " Contempt of the World 
and the Misery of Human Life." Innocent was not 
guilty of avarice, was not a worldling destitute of 
spiritual interests, who had intrigued to become pope 
or had been chosen by admirers of craft and cunning. 
His letters show him to have been aware of the 
degradation of the Church through simony, and to 
have been a friend of the poor, eager that they should 
get justice. With all this he may have hesitated to 
sanction an Order which would make a contrast be- 
tween its members and the clergy ; and which, by 
appeal to Scripture, would oppose the poverty and 
lowliness of Christ to the riches and pomp of His 
vicar. 

Innocent was engaged in the great ecclesiastical 
movement inspired by Hildebrand, and in securing the 
supremacy of the Church had no leisure, it must be 
said, to direct the religious life of Christendom. Hilde- 
brand, true to the reforming spirit of the age, and with 
a lofty conception of the function of the Church, desired 
. the secular clergy to practise monkish asceticism ; but 
in seeking ecclesiastical liberty he secularised the 
Church, and the road to supremacy was the road to 
degradation. A vicar of St. Peter without pomp or 
style could not be the superior of an emperor, and the 
striving for worldly splendour infested the clergy, who, 
forgetting asceticism, sought elevation along with the 
supreme pontiff. In the age of Hildebrand the Patarines 
in Italy, themselves practising monkish severities, had 



ST. FRANCIS 31 

inveighed against the clergy for worldliness, and had 
contrasted them with their own preachers, who walked 
in lowliness and poverty. In the twelfth century 
Arnold of Brescia was the most noted of those who set 
up poverty as the rule for all Christ's people. His 
preaching was construed as an unholy attack on a 
divine organisation, and the ecclesiastical revolutionist, 
obnoxious to Hadrian iv., as also to Frederick Bar- 
barossa for his republicanism, was done to death, the 
victim of a pope's tyranny and an emperor's petty 
wrath. His keenest opponent was Bernard of Clair- 
vaux, who was a monk for his own salvation, and 
the upholder of the Church for the welfare of the 
people. Yet Bernard, too religious not to be vexed by 
worldliness, exclaimed: Do not the "ambitiosi, avari, 
simonaici, sacrilegi, concubinarii, incestuari," flock from 
all the earth to Rome that they may obtain or retain 
ecclesiastical honours ? Again he cried : " Who will 
give me before I die to see the Church as it was in the 
ancient days, when the apostles cast their nets to catch 
souls, not silver and gold ? " Still stronger were his 
words: "It is no longer true that the priests are as 
bad as the people ; for the priests are worse than the 
people." One and all, the pious condemned the wealth 
of Rome and the sordid greed of the bishops and 
clergy ; and certainly the progress of the heretics in 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries was helped by their 
attacks on clerical pride and avarice. Sectarians, like 
the Apostolici, by contrast of their own practices, held 
up to scorn the priest who, ministering at the altar of 
Christ, did no other duty in His service. Waldo sold 
his goods that he might give to the needy, and the first 
Waldenses were styled the Poor Men of Lyons. The 



32 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

pious within and the heretics outside the Church con- 
demned that worldliness which was destroying its 
power, and which Innocent could not remove. 

It is not known from what source Francis received 
his impulse to poverty, and very likely to no particular 
sect or Order did he owe his inspiration. He had not 
lived, however, as a hermit, and must have been aware 
of the various attempts to bring back the Church to 
apostolic simplicity. There is the theory that his 
mother belonged to the Waldenses, and instructed him 
in the principles of her sect. Whatever the origin of 
his inspiration, Francis put himself in emphatic con- 
trast with the ordinary priest; and in this poverty 
adopted for Christ's sake, and honourably practised, 
there is one important factor of the success which 
crowned Franciscanism at its beginning. 

After the interview with Innocent, Francis and the 
Brothers turned once more to Assisi, near which, at 
Rivo Torto, they proceeded to occupy a ruined cottage. 
In the caves and grottos of the district they would 
spend hours and even days of contemplation. They may 
have been tempted to that life of contemplation which 
fascinated seekers for God ; but they resisted the charm, 
that they might preach to sinners and carry glad tidings 
to the poor. In one of the Little Flowers it is related 
that Brother Masseo was sent to Sister Clare and Brother 
Silvester to pray to God to show whether Francis 
should give himself to preaching or wholly unto prayer; 
and the divine answer was, that he should go through- 
out the world preaching, since he had been chosen not 
for himself alone, but also for the salvation of others. 

Rome had not rejected the Penitents, and now the 
churches were offered for their preaching. Francis did 



ST. FRANCIS 33 

not despise the courtesy of the clergy, but as a child of 
nature he loved the open air, and crowds gathered to 
him in places where there was no shelter of consecrated 
roof. And his style of teaching, in its freedom from 
conventionality, suited the open, since from first to last 
his sermons had nothing of the dialectic of the schools, 
and nothing of the hard dogma of the Church. They 
were the appeals, touched no doubt by the supersti- 
tions of the age, of a pious, earnest, loving soul to men 
to follow the Christ, to live through righteousness to 
the service of God. 

In Assisi, Francis became the helper of the oppressed, 
demanding certain privileges from the Majores for the 
Minores, and reconciling for a time the rich and poor. 
To emphasise the humility of the Brothers, and to 
bring them nearer to the Minores, as they were styled, 
he ordained that they should be known as Brothers 
Minor. In the Rule, according to Thomas of Celano, 
was the phrase " Et sunt Minores." Francis found a 
name in Minores, and an ideal in the name. 

The cottage at Rivo Torto, which had once been 
occupied by lepers, was not the property of the 
Minorites, and others were free to use it. One day 
a rude peasant took up his abode, and the Penitents 
moved out, exercising, as they hoped, humility and 
love. A chapel was now needed for their worship, 
and they obtained the Benedictine Chapel of Santa 
Maria degli Angeli, around which they built huts, 
forming what may be called the first Franciscan con- 
vent. That convent, even in its simplicity, was not to 
be a possession, not to be a permanent abode : it was 
to be but a centre from which to go out on missions, 
and to which to return. It was probably in imitation 
3 



34 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of Christ and His disciples that the Brothers, as is 
recorded, asked of Francis a form of prayer. In 
addition to the Lord's prayer he gave them this : " We 
adore Thee, Christ, in all Thy churches which are in 
all the world, and we bless Thee because Thou hast by 
Thy holy cross redeemed the world." The ritual of 
the Brothers was to be simple. The missions con- 
tinued; evangelisation was to be the chief labour of 
the Minorites. From place to place they moved in 
Umbria, singing in joy as they went. By Francis' 
express command, and after his own example, they 
were to be poor, possessing no property and accepting 
no money either for service or charity ; and they were 
to beg when they could not earn their bread. Work 
they must, though not in fixed employment. " I desire 
that all my brethren should labour," Francis is re- 
ported to have said, "at useful occupations, that we 
may be less of a burden to the people, and also that 
we may be less subject to maladies of the heart and 
tongue, and may not be tempted to evil thoughts or 
evil speaking." When work failed, the Brothers were 
not to be ashamed to beg. Christ Himself had said 
that the labourer is worthy of his hire. Brother 
Egidius, one of the paladins of his round table, 
Francis called him, carried water in Brindisi, made 
baskets at Ancona, sold wood in Rome. The first 
Minorites were not idlers, causing offence in the name 
of religion. They laboured, when they could, for bread, 
and were not ashamed, when hungry, to beg for it as 
the wages of spiritual service. But they were not to 
accept money, to touch that which had destroyed the 
uses of the Church. They were to be poor that they 
might follow Christ, that they might be cut off from 



ST. FRANCIS 3 5 

the temptations of the world, and that they might be 
one with the humblest on earth. If they had any- 
thing, they were to bestow it willingly on the needy. 
Francis himself once gave a beggar the mantle worn 
above his gown. He himself had but the loan of it, 
he declared. " Your life," said the Bishop of Assisi to 
Francis, " without any goods in the world seems to me 
most hard and terrible." " My lord," answered Francis, 
" if we had possessions we should need arms to protect 
them." Bonaventura, describing his predecessors in 
the Order, wrote : " Because they possessed nothing 
earthly, loved nothing earthly, and feared to lose 
nothing earthly, they were secure in all places ; 
troubled by no fears, distracted by no cares, they 
lived without trouble of mind, waiting without 
solicitude for the coming day or the night's lodg- 
ing." 

Bonaventura himself, in 1273, after he had been for 
seventeen years the head of the Franciscan Order, was 
elected a cardinal. When the messengers arrived to 
tell him of the election, they found him washing the 
dishes just used at one of the convent meals. He 
would not see them till his task was finished ; and 
till he was ready to receive it, so runs the story, 
the cardinal's hat was hung on the branch of a 
tree. 

Into his love of poverty Francis wove the grace of 
charity. The Brothers, though they were to be unlike 
the secular clergy, were to be courteous, saluting them 
by kissing their hands. Nor were the rich to be 
despised. "There are men," he said, "who to-day 
appear to us to be members of the devil, who one day 
shall be members of Christ." The same courtesy is 



36 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

enjoined in the Rule, where it prescribes the ways of 
poverty : " And all the Brothers are to be clad in mean 
habits, and may blessedly mend them with sacks and 
other pieces ; whom I admonish and exhort, that they 
do not despise or censure such men as they see clad in 
curious and gay garments, and using delicate meats 
and drinks, but rather let every one judge and despise 
himself." 

At the Lateran Council of 1215, when Innocent sat 
on the papal throne as on the seat of the empire of 
the world, the case of the Minorites was considered. 
The pope, desiring them to join themselves to an exist- 
ing Order, as Dominic and his companions were to 
associate with the Augustinians, once more refused a 
formal sanction of their Rule. The papal advice did 
not, however, commend itself to Francis, and remem- 
bering the corruption of the Monastic Orders, he 
would not agree. Innocent died before this dispute 
was settled, but the papal policy was continued by 
the Cardinal Ugolini, the future Gregory ix. The 
cardinal, John of St. Paul, who had befriended Francis 
died, and Ugolini came forward to offer protection not 
to be despised, since there were members of the Roman 
Curia strongly opposed to the Minorites. Ugolini was 
interested, indeed, in the Brothers and their work, but 
he was determined they should not depart too far from 
the ways of the Church. 

In the year 1219, some say 1217, the Franciscan 
mission was organised by the institution of provinces 
in various countries, and the appointment of provincial 
superiors. Jacques de Vitry, in his journal of events 
of 1216, shows the wide extent of the mission in that 
year. " The men of this Order," he relates, " assemble, 



ST. FRANCIS 37 

not without great profit, once every year, in a place 
prearranged, to rejoice in the Lord and to eat to- 
gether ; then, with the counsel of good men, they 
adopt pious resolutions, approved by the pope. After 
that they disperse for the remainder of the year 
through Lombardy and Tuscany, and even to Apulia 
and Sicily." The Brotherhood increased by the in- 
coming of all sorts of men, rich and poor, scholars and 
peasants. Three robbers, who were murderers, are 
mentioned. With the increase the area of the mission 
widened, and men were sent forth, some of whom were 
to win the distinction of martyrdom. Brother Elias 
proceeded to Syria; and Francis himself attempted, 
though he failed, to reach the East, that he might 
proclaim the gospel to the followers of Mahomet. 
He failed, too, when his zeal would have carried 
him to Morocco to convert the Sultan, and there is 
a report of his mission to Spain to preach to the 
Moors. 

The purpose for which the mission was organised is 
set forth in these words, supposed to be addressed by 
the saint to Cardinal Ugolini : " Do you think that 
God raised up the Brothers for the sake of this country 
alone ? Verily, I say unto you, God has raised them 
up for the awakening and the salvation of all men, 
and they shall win souls not only in the countries of 
those who believe, but also in the very midst of the 
infidels." 

In 1219 Francis, once more determining to visit the 
infidels, as they were styled, proceeded to Damietta, 
where the Christian forces were gathering in one of 
the Crusades. The determination showed zeal but not 
wisdom in the man who thought that the gospel, if 



38 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

preached in purity, would prove acceptable to all 
people. One story has it that he sought in pious 
pilgrimage the places sanctified by the feet of Christ. 
According to another, after preaching to the soldiers 
in the Christian army, he passed to the Mohammedans, 
and was taken to the presence of the Sultan Kamel. 
In the version of Jacques de Vitry, who was with the 
Crusaders, the Sultan received Francis with courtesy, 
doubtless taking his enthusiasm for madness, and after 
hearing him on several occasions, sent him back to his 
friends, saying at parting: "Pray for me, that God 
may enlighten me, and enable me to hold firmly to 
that religion which is most pleasing to Him." 

Bonaventura describes the visit as paid to the 
Sultan of Babylon, who asked Francis to abide with 
him for a time. Francis agreed to remain, provided 
the king and the people embraced Christianity; but, 
if this could not be, he desired that he and some 
of the Mohammedan priests should enter a fire, in 
order to try which was the true religion. The Sultan 
declared that none of his priests would willingly 
engage in such a contest, whereupon Francis, anxious 
to secure victory, offered to enter the fire, on condition 
that if he passed through uninjured the king should 
become a Christian. Francis was dismissed, after the 
Sultan had pressed gifts, which were refused. 

During the sojourn of Francis in the East important 
changes were taking place, beginnings of that pro- 
tracted revolution which was to transform the Order. 
Francis had renounced the world for the sake of 
leading the life in Christ, and there is nothing to show 
that at first he thought even of a Brotherhood. Men 
joined him, and while he saw the need of organisation 



ST. FRANCIS 39 

he refused privileges and shunned formalities. He 
was captivated by poverty and impelled towards it by 
a spirit of chivalry, and, more seriously, by a pious 
desire to avoid the avarice debasing the Church. In 
no sense did he oppose the Church or join with those 
who judged Arnold of Brescia a martyr for gospel 
truth. Yet the purposes and ideals of the great 
ecclesiastics were very different from his, and not 
unnaturally some have counted him the victim of an 
intrigue, when the Brotherhood came under the 
direction of the Church. Ugolini, it has been affirmed, 
inspired the changes effected during Francis' stay in 
the East. And yet the saint was friendly with 
Ugolini, as he was with Elias, the Brother credited 
with being the servant of the cardinal's schemes. 

Francis was not a dreamer to imagine that a thou- 
sand friars, whom perhaps he had never seen, would 
be controlled by his example and filled with his 
enthusiasm for simplicity. But he had ideals, and 
these he would cherish, opposing all schemes of 
prelates and friars alike which would do violence to 
his plans. He would not and did not refuse obedience ; 
but, to his mind, the best service to the Church was to 
follow poverty and restore simplicity. The Brother- 
hood grew, and, as its members were of different lands 
and tongues, it required papal help that it might be 
preserved. The progress was greater than the dream 
of a visionary or the pride of an egoist could have 
predicted ; and Francis was not so foolish as to think 
that the glory of success was due to him alone, and 
that he could altogether save it from official control. 
During Francis' absence the opportunity for inter- 
ference came, and Ugolini, as protector, introduced 



40 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

changes to bind the Order to the Church. That 
interference, however, might not then have taken 
place had not the rumour circulated that the saint 
was dead. One of the most serious changes was the 
direction of the Poor Ladies of St. Damian, the Poor 
Clares, as they were afterwards named. In the year 
1212 Francis had admitted to the life of poverty a 
young girl of Assisi, Clara, daughter of the noble 
house of Sciffi. By his preaching she had been 
brought to a contempt of the world : " he had poured 
into her ears the sweetness of Christ." She and 
certain maidens who had joined her were ultimately 
received into the Chapel of St. Damian, as a convent, 
where they were to live in the spirit of the Eule which 
guided the Brothers. As they could not preach, and 
were not to go forth to beg, they were to employ 
themselves with work such as embroidering altar- 
cloths, and were to attend the sick. The Brothers 
were to help in their support, and charity was to 
supply that which was lacking. 

Clara was born in 1194, and, according to the 
legend, before her birth a voice from heaven said that 
her life would be brilliant. Her mother accordingly 
desired that the child should be called Clara. 
Asceticism ruled her as a girl, and under her rich 
apparel she wore a cruel cincture. Suitors were many, 
but to none would she listen. The fame of Francis 
reached her. Having heard him preach in the Cathedral 
of Assisi, she sought converse with the new apostle. 
At his advice she fled with companions from her 
father's house to Portiuncula, to be followed in after 
days by other members of the family ; and when she 
had taken the vow of poverty, with his own hands he 



ST. FRANCIS 41 

cut off her flowing hair, consecrating her as a nun. 
Her first days of poverty were spent in a Benedictine 
convent, from which she removed to the Church of 
St. Damian. It is to be remembered that the man 
who advised the flight of a girl from her home had 
himself left all for Christ's sake ; and also that he 
who assumed a bishop's function, consecrating a 
nun, himself asked no priest to set him apart for 
Christ. 

Clara died long after the saint had " fallen asleep," 
and in 1255, two years after her death, was canonised 
by Alexander iv. Throughout the later years of his 
life there was romantic converse between Francis, with 
some of his friars, and the ladies of St. Damian. 
Slander never touched that converse, and his most 
peaceful hours were those spent in the garden of St. 
Damian, when Clara ministered to her friend. 

The number of the Sisters rapidly increased, and in 
a few years after Clara entered St Damian there were 
houses in Italy, France, and Spain. The Rule by which 
the nuns were to live was a modification of that made 
by the saint for the Brothers. Ugolini put in its 
place one framed by himself ; and, though the newly 
established houses were willing to accept it, Clara was 
stubborn in her determination to abide by the statutes 
of Francis. In 1219 Ugolini bestowed on the 
Benedictine nuns certain privileges, which Brother 
Philip obtained for the Poor Ladies. The Rule given 
by Ugolini and the privileges meant conventional for- 
mality and a relaxation of the austerities of poverty : 
and, to his annoyance, Francis found on his return 
that Brother Philip had been trafficking with Ugolini, 
and that his own plan, to constrain the nuns by the 



42 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

example of his life and the power of his character, 
and to keep them true to poverty, had been seriously 
impaired. Among the Brothers themselves greater 
severity of conduct had been introduced. True to the 
letter and spirit of the gospel, Francis had allowed the 
liberty expressed in Luke x. 8, "And into whatsoever city 
ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are 
set before you." The two vicars, however, whom he had 
left in charge made the rules of fasting more stringent, 
that they might conform their customs to those of the 
established Orders. The change was slight, but it was 
a violation of the freedom and simplicity which were 
ground principles of Francis' life. 

Another event indicated how soon his teaching was 
to be misunderstood. One of the Brothers, John of 
Capella, was endeavouring to gather the lepers into 
an Order, and a Rule for their obedience was submitted 
to the pope. It was not to the mind of Francis that 
his Brotherhood should be travestied by any Order 
with fixed monastic rule, or that any of his friars 
should be enamoured of formalities in piety. Later 
tradition tells that Francis found that a house was 
being erected at Bologna for the Brothers, and was 
already inhabited in part. He ordered them to quit 
it at once, and was pacified only when assured that 
it was not their property. 

The primitive simplicity of the Minorites could not 
be maintained when the Society numbered thousands, 
and this Francis knew. According to Bonaventura, 
five thousand men attended one of the chapters held 
before the Rule was finally sanctioned by Rome. 
Francis, forced by the logic of events, was compelled 
in 1219 to accept papal protection for the Brothers 



ST. FRANCIS 43 

of the mission, many of whom had reported that they 
were being treated as heretics or revolutionists. 
Forced to another step, he solicited from the pope 
the appointment of an official protector. Francis 
stood before Innocent's successor with this request, 
in spite of his early determination to seek no 
privilege. Cardinal Ugolini, because of his friendship, 
was named protector ; and, armed with authority, 
continued the plan, which was that of Innocent, of 
bringing the Brotherhood into closer touch with the 
papacy. One of his schemes was to choose, on 
occasion, prelates from among the Minorites, as he 
appreciated the benefit of appointing men with no 
family interests to serve. To Ugolini's proposal 
Francis replied : " My friars have been called Minores 
in order that they may not presume to become 
Majores. If you desire that they may bear fruit in 
the Church, keep them and preserve them in the 
place to which they were called/' 

One of the first indications of Ugolini's official 
directorship was the withdrawal of the privileges 
solicited by Brother Philip for the nuns, and the 
refusal to establish an Order of lepers. On the other 
hand, he required that a definite Rule should be 
formulated for the Brotherhood. That Rule was 
prepared, but before its sanction it suffered many 
things at the hands of the Roman Curia, and Francis, 
in spite of lost ideals, but from loyalty to the 
Church, had to be content. It is told of the saint 
that, in the midst of his troubles, he went out one 
night to pray, and seemed to hear God saying : " Poor 
little man ! I govern the universe ; thinkest thou that 
I cannot overrule the concerns of thy little Order ? " 



44 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

The story shows the man. Francis' trust in God was 
sure, and in himself he had none. Wounded pride, 
scorn of change, unfulfilled ideals, were laid as 
sacrifices before Him who, governing a world, could 
direct the friars. 



CHAPTEE III 

St. Francis — continued 

The negotiations between Francis and Ugolini resulted 
in 1220 in the publication of a bull, which may be 
taken as the official recognition of the Brotherhood. 
It contained the significant words : " In nearly all re- 
ligious Orders it has been wisely ordained that those 
who present themselves with the purpose of observing 
the regular life shall make trial of it for a certain time, 
during which they shall be tested, in order to leave 
neither place nor pretext for inconsiderate steps. For 
these reasons we command you by these presents to 
admit no one to make profession until after one year 
of novitiate ; we forbid that after profession any 
Brother shall leave the Order, and that anyone shall 
take back again him who has gone out from it. We 
also forbid that those wearing your habit shall cir- 
culate here and there without obedience, lest the purity 
of your poverty be corrupted. If any friars have had 
this audacity, you will inflict upon them ecclesiastical 
censures until repentance." 

Four years before the date of this bull the Dominican 
Order had been founded, and from the first was placed 
under papal direction. Why should not Francis act as 
a dutiful son, and be guided by the wisdom of the 
highest in the Church ? The bull was certainly in- 

45 



46 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

spired by the desire to conform the Franciscans to the 
fashion of existing Orders. A chapter was held at 
which the papal communication was read, and the 
details of the new Rule were discussed. The incident 
of chief importance, however, was the retiral of Francis 
from the leadership, or rather his refusal to become the 
head of the newly recognised Order. Pietro di Catana, 
a doctor of laws and a man of noble birth, was chosen 
minister-general, but he lived little more than a year 
to bear the burden of office. He had been a canon of 
the Cathedral of Assisi, and was one of the first to join 
the Minorites. Francis chose him as his companion in 
the East, and knowing and loving him as he did, it 
may be taken that he nominated him as minister- 
general. He himself had not withdrawn from office, 
annoyed by the papal policy. He retired from leader- 
ship, being unfitted for a place which required 
organising and directing activities rather than piety 
and emotion. 

Pietro di Catana died in 1221, and was buried in 
Portiuncula, into which, according to Thomas of Celano, 
no layman was allowed to enter. After the burial 
multitudes flocked to the church, on account of the 
miracles which were wrought ; and Francis, disturbed 
by their tumult, went to the tomb and said : " Brother 
Peter, in life you were always obedient to me; as, 
through your miracles, we are pestered by laymen, 
you must obey me in death. I therefore order you 
on your obedience to cease from the miracles through 
which we are troubled by laymen." The saint hated 
clamour and noise, and was not of those who rushed 
after signs and wonders. The next to become minister- 
general was Elias of Cortona, who continued in the 



ST. FRANCIS 47 

leadership till he had made the Order the mere tool 
or agent of the papacy. 

In 1221, some writers tell us, the Tertiaries, or Third 
Order, were founded. These Tertiaries were not monks 
or friars in any sense, but were men and women moved 
to bring the fundamental teaching of the gospel into 
the conduct of daily life. From the first appearance 
of Francis as an evangelist of poverty and love, and 
not from the exact date 1221, there were men and 
women who could not join the Brotherhood or Sister- 
hood, and yet desired to obey the informal Rule which 
he had framed. Certain duties, we are told, were pre- 
scribed for them. They were to keep God's command- 
ments, to avoid oaths and lawsuits, to carry no arms 
except for defence of the Church, to live in the 
simplicity of few material wants, and to give liberally 
to the poor. Above all, the love of Christ was to enter 
their hearts, and His example to shape their conduct. 
These Tertiaries, who were to have a long and varied 
history, were proofs of the spiritual excellence of the 
Franciscan movement, which affected men and women 
not in convents or associations separated from the 
world, but in the family and amidst ordinary business. 

A Rule for the Tertiaries, we are told, was approved by 
the pope, and the name, Brothers and Sisters of Peni- 
tence, obtained official recognition. Assertions of this 
kind, however, are doubtful, as Francis ever feared that 
the letter might kill the spirit. It is more likely that 
the Rule belonged to a later year. The form of the vow 
which candidates for admission were required to take 
speaks of a time subsequent to the death of the saint. 
These candidates, after an examination regarding con- 
duct, manners, and association with neighbours, had to 



48 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

repeat these words : " I promise and vow to God, the 
Blessed Virgin, our father St. Francis, and all the saints 
of paradise, to keep all the Commandments of God 
during the entire course of my life, and to make satis- 
faction for the transgressions which I may have com- 
mitted against the Rule and manner of life of the Order 
of Penitents, instituted by Francis, according to the 
will of the visitor of that Order, when I am admitted 
into it." 

The story of the foundation of the Third Order is not 
simple. It is unlikely that Francis dictated a Rule ; 
and certainly the only one of which we have definite 
information is that issued by Nicolas IV., which was 
intended for all the existing religious societies of lay- 
men. The Tertiaries, however, were mentioned in a 
bull of 1221, the alleged year of their foundation ; while 
in 1230 Gregory ix. styled them fratres tertii ordinis, 
and in 1247 Innocent IV. placed them under the 
directorship of the minister-general. Of some interest 
is the fact that in 1882, the 700th anniversary of the 
birth of the saint, Pope Leo xiii. in an encyclical 
declared that the institution of Franciscan Tertiaries 
was alone fitted to save humanity from the social and 
political dangers which threatened it. 

It was the glory of Francis to spread religion beyond 
the cloister, and carry it into family life. He would 
have men brought to repentance, and filled with a love 
to Christ which would constrain them to poverty and 
goodness. These Franciscan Tertiaries, like the associ- 
ates of other Orders, were helpful in removing the 
barrier between laymen and clerics, with the result 
that religion was no longer the possession in a special 
way of the priest, the monk, and the nun. 



ST. FRANCIS 49 

Poverty for Francis, as for Dominic, was not simply 
a question of property or money : it meant for them 
the sum of the virtues or graces in the character of 
Jesus Christ. The mendicants, when they taught this 
doctrine in its purity, in the years of their enthusiasm 
in the thirteenth century, brought the lesson home 
to individuals that salvation was to be found not 
through adherence to rites and ceremonies, through 
devotion to the Church, or through attention to the 
sacraments, but through imitation in spirit and in 
truth of the virtues of Jesus. Men came to know 
their responsibilities as individuals and their duties 
in society; learned that the humanity of Christ was 
their ideal, and that to attain to His perfection was 
to attain to fellowship with Him as God. It was to 
the lasting honour of the friars that, in an age when 
piety was feeble and worship was formal, they 
quickened the spiritual life of the Church, rousing 
and freeing men from sloth and slavery in religion, 
making them conscious of the infinite importance 
of the issues of the soul. St. Elizabeth of Hungary 
and St. Louis of France, with their severe uses of 
piety, are numbered among the Tertiaries ; and, in 
spite of these uses, they show how religion had passed 
from mere ritual to the conduct of life. 

It is a constant tradition that, during part of his 
life, Dante was a Tertiary ; and the assertion is also 
made, not without plausibility, that after his death 
he was clothed, according to a wish he had expressed, 
in the Franciscan dress. Beyond doubt, however, 
is the fact that he was buried in a chapel of the 
Franciscan Church of Ravenna. 

According to some interpreters, there is a direct 
4 



So FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

allusion to the Franciscan cord in the mention of 
that one with which the poet girds himself for the 
contest with the panther, the symbol of lust and 
pride — 

" I had a cord which round my waist I wore, 
And with it once of old I thought to take 

The panther with its skin all dappled o'er." 

The cord was useless, and in this fact a reference 
has been traced to Dante's dissatisfaction with the 
Tertiaries, among whom he found no help to salva- 
tion. It is significant that, in the second part of his 
great poem, he represents himself as girt not with 
a cord, but with the rush, an emblem of humility — 

"Go then, and gird thou this man, as I teach, 
With a smooth rush." 

Apart from purely religious effects, the association of 
the Tertiaries had important results. The prohibition 
of arms, save for the defence of the Church, helped 
to destroy the medieval idea of virtue. War was no 
longer to be the first concern of a free man. This 
change in the moral ideal advanced the growth of 
the middle classes, turning men's attention to trade 
and commerce, and served also the cause of peace. 
The restriction, too, of the use of arms to the pro- 
tection of religion was soon to tell in favour of the 
Church in the great struggle between the papal and, 
imperial powers, when the Franciscan Tertiaries aided 
the friars in destroying the authority of Frederick II. 

The rise of the middle classes helped to remove the 
gulf between the rich and the poor ; but to the Fran- 
ciscan movement, and, as part of it, to the establishment 
of the Tertiaries, is to be attributed the more humane 



ST. FRANCIS 51 

feeling which existed between all ranks of society. 
The poor felt that they were not outcasts from 
humanity, when there were men to heed them, aiding 
and pitying them; the rich felt that they were 
brothers to the poor, when they recognised a duty 
to them, and did it. The plebeian crowd of the 
city, spurned by the nobles, despised by the artizans ; 
poorer and meaner than the feudal serfs, learned 
through Francis that Christianity could bring the 
fortunate to the unfortunate, could consecrate the 
strong to the service of the weak. Francis especially, 
but Dominic too, was a saviour of society in bringing 
the classes together through sympathy and uniting 
them through duty. Civilisation progressed as men 
ceased to strive for domination one over another, and 
learned that the one blood of which God had made 
them was the symbol of their unity. 

The Rule, for the preparation of which Francis had 
received a papal instruction, was finished in 1221 
and presented to the pope. It was important in this 
respect, that the Brotherhood officially determined 
that there should be no longer the rule of one man 
acting with the authority of his own personality and 
genius. A minister-general was to govern, having 
under him ministers to direct the mission and to 
examine candidates for entrance. Francis desired, 
however, that these men should be servants and not 
masters. The peculiar ethic of the Order was set 
forth. The simplicity of the prescribed ritual, with 
the attention to be paid to poverty and work, and 
especially to the renunciation of money, showed that 
the saint desired the friars to continue in the poverty, 
piety, and humility which had guided his own con- 



52 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

cluct. As the Rule was not framed in conventional 
mode, and contained dissertations on religion and morals, 
it was not likely to be sanctioned without suffering 
serious changes. 

On the 29th of November 1223 the Rule was at 
last published under the authority of Honorius III., 
and was little more than a collection of statutes, 
showing almost nothing of the handwork of Francis. 
The ethical or spiritual exhortations were omitted, 
as were also, for the most part, the passages from the 
Bible which had been so important at the foundation 
of the Brotherhood. The value of life in harmony 
with the precepts of the gospel, the beauty of poverty, 
and the use of preaching were set forth, but there was 
no emphasis on the imitation of Christ. Francis had 
ordained that the Brothers should labour for daily 
bread, and had declared that begging was legitimate, 
when there was no other resource; now, labour was 
to be a means of avoiding idleness, while begging was 
to be a privilege and mark of the Order. Another 
feature was notable. The pope was to name from 
time to time some cardinal as governor or protector, 
and a general-minister and provincial-ministers were 
to be appointed. The general-minister, to whom the 
Brothers were to give obedience, was to be the servant 
of the pope, so that they might be kept under the 
supervision of the Church. How far Francis agreed 
to these changes is not to be determined. Probably 
they were made at the instigation of Cardinal Ugolini 
representing the Church, and Elias of Cortona within 
the Order, as events were to indicate. Francis agreed 
to them, but with what grace? He was convinced, 
there is no reason to doubt, that a new Rule was 



ST. FRANCIS 53 

needed, since the Brotherhood had made rapid increase. 
It could hardly have been with satisfaction, however, 
that he saw poverty, the imitation of the life of Christ, 
pass into mendicancy, and the freedom of individual 
piety sink into obedience to the Church. The Order 
had changed, but he himself was still faithful to the 
Lady Poverty, still true to the simplicity which secured 
freedom from worldly concerns. 

It is to be noted that mendicancy became the privi- 
ledge of the pious under sanction of the official Rule, 
while Francis himself cherished the idea of the dignity 
of labour ; and his example was not lost on the work- 
ing classes of the towns. He had no wish that he and 
his Brothers should beg, unless when work failed ; and 
work was pursued not as a means to wealth, but to 
daily bread. Freely he would give, and freely, too, 
would accept anything bestowed in love ; and just as 
readily would he work for the bread for which he 
prayed. Poverty, not mendicancy, was his ideal. 
Francis became the popular medieval saint, and while 
his poverty was a rebuke to worldliness, his judgment 
of labour as the honourable means to daily bread 
fostered self-respect in the artizans, who were rapidly 
increasing in the towns. 

One of the peculiarities or characteristics of Francis 
was his attitude to learning, which, however, is 
intelligible. Legend has declared that he prophesied 
the ruin of his Order through zeal for study ; but it 
was certainly not the pursuit of knowledge by which 
it suffered degradation. Strange stories are recorded, 
in one of which he speaks thus to a novice desiring 
to possess a psalter: 

" The Emperor Charles, Roland and Oliver, and all 



54 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the paladins and all strong men, have pursued the 
infidel in battle till death, and with great trouble and 
labour have won their memorable victories. The holy- 
martyrs died struggling for the faith of Christ. But 
in our days there are persons who seek glory and 
honour among men by the narration simply of the 
exploits of heroes. In like manner there are some 
among you who take more pleasure in writing and 
preaching on the merits of the saints than in imitating 
their works." And he afterwards said to the youth : 
" When you have a psalter you will wish to have a 
breviary, and when you have a breviary you will sit in 
a chair like a great prelate, and will say to your brother, 
' Brother, fetch me my breviary.' ' When, again, he 
heard that a famous doctor of Paris, perhaps Alexander 
Hales, had been received into the Order, he said : " I 
am afraid that such doctors will be the destruction of 
my vineyard. They are the true doctors who, with 
the meekness of wisdom, exhibit good works for the 
improvement and edification of their neighbours." 

In 1222 he wrote to his friends in Bologna, where the 
Dominicans had also settled, a letter displaying intense 
feeling, and dictated probably as a warning against 
the neglect of piety for the sake of learning. " Lord 
Jesus," thus he spoke, " Thou didst choose Thine apostles 
to the number of twelve, and if one of them did 
betray Thee, the others, remaining united to Thee, 
preached the holy gospel, filled with one and the same 
inspiration ; and behold now, remembering the former 
days, Thou hast raised up the religion of the Brothers 
in order to uphold the faith, and that by them the 
mystery of Thy gospel may be accomplished. Who 
will take their place if, instead of fulfilling their 



ST. FRANCIS 5 5 

mission and being shining examples for all, they are 
seen to give themselves up to works of darkness ? Oh ! 
may they be accursed by Thee, Lord, and by all the 
court of heaven, and by me, Thine unworthy servant, 
they who by their bad example overturn and destroy 
all that Thou didst do in the beginning, and ceasest not 
to do by the holy Brothers of this Order." 

The letter, which may have been simply a warning 
against idleness or worldliness, shows that the fire of 
youth had not died out, and that the passion for the 
life in Christ still burned. It may be, however, that 
he wrote to the Brothers of Bologna to guard them 
against what he deemed was their strongest temptation, 
the forsaking of the simplicity of the gospel for the 
learning of the schools, after which the Dominicans 
sought. Dominic had been trained in theology, and 
the members of his Order equipped themselves with 
science to overcome heresy. Francis, the son of a 
trader, had no culture beyond the refinement of a 
lyric taste, and to him scholastic study was nothing. 
He had the passionate desire that he and his friends 
should commend religion by imitation of Christ, and 
learning therefore had no place in his schemes. Piety 
and not science was the one thing needful in preaching 
to the poor, to the aliens from the commonwealth of 
humanity, among whom the Minorites laboured. 

At the same time, the opposition of Francis to 
learning was not fanatical. Opposition it hardly was. 
He was afraid that learning might draw the friars 
away from Christ. In a letter addressed to Antony 
of Padua his position may be seen. That letter, 
pronounced by some to be a forgery, is certainly in 
harmony with his own words in his Testament. " It 



56 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

pleases nie," thus it is written, " that you interpret to 
the Brothers the sacred writings and theology, in such 
a way, however (conformably to our Rule), that the 
spirit of holy prayer be not extinguished either in you 
or in others, which I desire earnestly." In the Testa- 
ment it is laid down : " We ought to honour and 
revere all the theologians, and those who preach the 
most holy word of God, as dispensing to us spirit and 
life." Whatever may have been the attitude of Francis 
to scientific study and theological learning, — and it does 
not seem to have been favourable, — many of the Brothers 
attained high distinction in the universities. It is not 
an exaggeration to say that the Franciscans of England, 
in the latter half of the thirteenth century, became the 
most distinguished body of scholars in Europe, and 
their fame, one tradition says, attracted Dante to the 
university of Oxford. 

In 1224 the new Rule was presented to the Order 
at a chapter, — the last which Francis was to attend. 
It is to this year that innumerable biographers have 
assigned the incident of the stigmata. Verna, a 
mountain-peak rising on the borders of Tuscany, was 
the scene of a mysterious vision, of a seraph with six 
wings, which appeared to Francis, and which bore the 
image of a man crucified. He had prayed : " O my 
Lord Jesus Christ, I beseech Thee grant me two graces 
before I die : the first, that in my lifetime I may feel 
in my soul and in my body, so far as may be, the pain 
that Thou, sweet Lord, didst bear in the hours of Thy 
most bitter passion ; the second is, that I may feel in 
my heart, as far as may be, that exceeding love where- 
with Thou, O Son of God, wast kindled to willingly 
endure such agony for us sinners." The seraph was 



ST. FRANCIS 57 

the Christ, and Francis felt the joy of His presence and 
His love, and, at the same time, sorrow for the pain of 
the Crucified One. Then it was revealed to him that 
he should understand that " not by the martyrdom of 
the body, but by the enkindling of his mind, must he 
needs be wholly transformed into the express image of 
Christ crucified." And yet, when the vision had passed, 
there was in the flesh of Francis a copy of the wounds 
of Christ. " His hands and his feet appeared pierced 
through the midst with nails, the heads of the nails 
being seen in the inside of the hands and upper part of 
the feet, and the points on the reverse side. The heads 
of the nails in the hands and feet were round and 
black, and the points somewhat long and bent, as if 
they had been turned back. On the right side, as if 
it had been pierced with a lance, was the mark of a 
red wound, from which the sacred blood often flowed 
and stained his tunic." In the Little Flowers we 
are told that Christ said to His servant, before the 
stigmata were actually given : " Knowest thou what it 
is that I have done unto thee ? I have given thee the 
stigmata, that are the signs of my passion, to the end 
that thou mayest be my standard-bearer. And even 
as on the day of my death I descended into hell and 
brought out thence all the souls that I found there by 
virtue of these my stigmata: even so do I grant to 
thee that every year on the day of thy death thou 
shall go to Purgatory, and in virtue of thy stigmata 
shalt bring out thence all the souls of thy three Orders, 
to wit, Minors, Sisters, and Continents ; and likewise, 
others that shall have had a great devotion unto thee, 
and shalt lead them unto the glory of Paradise, to the 
end that thou mayest be conformed to me in death, 



58 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

as thou art in life." These words simply show the 
progress of the legend, and have nothing of the 
dramatic interest of the vision and the gift of the 
stigmata. With touching humility, as it is narrated, 
Francis tried to conceal the wounds, and yet many 
saw and testified that they had seen them. A knight 
of renown, Jerome by name, was the doubting Thomas 
of this new Passion, and would not believe till the 
dead Francis appeared and made him touch the nails 
and the wound. The Lady Jacoba, who in the legend 
was present at the death of Francis, kissed the pierced 
feet and bathed them with her tears, showing herself 
another Magdalene; while Clara and her Sisters, at 
the burial, saw the tokens of the Saviours favour. 
In one of the frescoes of Giotto the forms of Clara and 
her companions may be seen bending over the body of 
the saint. The story of Gregory ix. and the stigmata 
is thus told by Lord Lindsay : " He hesitated before 
canonising St. Francis, doubting the celestial infliction 
of the stigmata. St. Francis appeared to him in a 
vision, and, with a severe countenance reproving his 
unbelief, opened his robe, and, exposing the wound in 
his side, filled a vial with the blood that flowed from 
it, and gave it to the pope, who awoke and found it in 
his hand." 

The Minorites and — of importance for the spread of 
the story — Gregory ix. and Alexander iv. accepted the 
genuineness of the stigmata, so that the friends of the 
Order were satisfied and rejoiced in the divine honour. 
Zealots have believed the miracle; sceptics have doubted, 
while some have denied it. The evidence, such as it is, 
makes for the conclusion that the body bore the marks 
of the suffering of Christ. Yet there has been evidence 



ST. FRANCIS 59 

of the same kind for wonders which never happened. 
There are those, unconvinced by the testimony of the 
saint's friends, who disbelieving the miracle regret with 
artistic sense the loss of the dramatic incident of the 
stigmata. The members of the Order, however, have 
been pleased to draw a parallel between the saint's 
career and the Saviour's life, and to accept the wounds 
as a sign that there was in Francis the same mind as 
was in Christ. 

The theory has been suggested that Brother Elias, 
who intimated the death of Francis to the Order, was 
the author of the fraud by which the story of the 
stigmata gained acceptance. The intimation contained 
these words : " I announce to you a great joy and a 
new miracle. Never has the world seen such a sign, 
except on the Son of God who is the Christ God. For 
a long time before his death our Brother and Father 
appeared as crucified, having in his body five wounds 
which are truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands 
and his feet bore marks as of nails without and within, 
forming a sort of scars ; while at the side he was as if 
pierced with a lance, and often a little blood oozed 
from it." Professor Hase, and M. Renan follows him, 
suggests that Elias hurried the funeral, and when veri- 
fication was impossible invented the story. Another 
theory is that the wounds of the cautery used in his 
last sickness were the origin of the legend of the stig- 
mata. Such a theory does not remove the difficulty 
that the men who declared themselves witnesses were 
not likely to be deceived by a palpable fraud. 

The Dominicans would not be convinced that this 
divine favour had been granted to the founder of the 
Franciscan Order, even though they had a multitude 



60 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of miracles by their own saint. At last their denials 
of the stigmata were silenced by papal command. In 
their extremity some of them, changing their position, 
claimed that the same favour had been shown to 
Dominic ; while it became the fashion, after the death 
of Catharine of Siena, to assert for her the honour of 
the wounds of Christ. In 1475, however, Sixtus iv. 
prohibited the ascription of the stigmata to Catharine ; 
and so by papal decree the glory rests with Francis 
alone, 

As the legend of St. Francis grew, the desire of his 
admirers increased to make him like unto Christ. 
Peter John Olivi, in the reign of John xxil., wrote 
that Francis was entirely transformed into Christ ; 
and, in the same reign, Francis Bernard Delitiosi de- 
clared that the Gospel of Christ was not more sacred 
and more to be observed than the Rule of St. Francis. 
In 1385 Bartholomew Abbizzi, a friar of Pisa, wrote 
The Golden Booh of the Conformities of the Holy 
Father St. Francis with the Life of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, in which he mentioned forty points of resem- 
blance, and among these included the stigmata. As 
late as 1651 a Spanish monk increased the points of 
resemblance to four thousand. 

After the incident or vision of the stigmata, Francis 
sought the aid of a physician, as he was suffering from 
an affection which threatened blindness. An operation 
on the forehead was performed with the cautery, but 
with no good result. Eager none the less to continue 
his labours, he preached in the district of Rieti, making 
missionary excursions. Strength failed, and, as Bona- 
ventura reports, "he began to suffer so many infirmities 
that there was scarcely one of his members but was 



ST. FRANCIS 6 1 

tormented by increased pain and suffering." As early 
as the chapter of 1221 his weakness had almost 
mastered him. Wishing to address the Brothers, he 
pulled the gown of Elias, whispering to him, and then 
Elias spoke for him. Now, in his feebleness, he de- 
sired to leave Rieti and to reach Assisi, where he 
was comforted with the welcome of the people. Six 
months later he was still alive, and set forth on 
another journey in quest of health, only to be brought 
back in a litter to the bishop's palace. A few days 
after his arrival in the palace he was taken to Porti- 
uncula. " Never abandon it," he said to the friars 
with him, " for that place is truly sacred ; it is the 
house of God." On the road to the palace or to 
Portiuncula he caused the litter to be placed on the 
ground, that he might gaze on Assisi ; and stretching 
forth his hand, he blessed the city which had been his 
home. " Blessed be thou of God, O holy city," — these 
are the words in the Little Flowers — "seeing that 
through thee shall many souls be saved, and in thee 
shall dwell many servants of the Lord : and out of 
thee shall many be chosen for the kingdom of eternal 
life." He was borne to the hospital, such as it was, of 
Portiuncula, and there he dictated his last Testament. 
An incident thus recorded shows the man : " Desiring 
to give a true proof to all men that he had no longer 
anything in common with the world, in that grievous 
and painful sickness he laid aside his habit, and placed 
himself prostrate on the bare earth, that in the last 
hour in which the enemy would attack him with all 
his fury he might wrestle naked with his natural 
adversary. Lying thus on the earth with his face 
raised, according to his custom, to heaven, and intent 



62 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

upon its glory, with his left hand he covered the wound 
on his right side, and said to his brethren, ' I have done 
my part : may Christ teach you to do yours.' " Some 
of the friars were around him, among them men who 
had been his first friends, and these all he blessed. 
Clara was still living, but the stern Rule kept her 
from the deathbed of her dearest friend. Elias, too, 
was blessed, though the extreme Franciscans of later 
days, beholding in him another Judas, hated his 
memory. One of his pious disciples, as an early 
biographer relates, saw the soul of the saint, in the 
form of a star, brighter than the sun, conveyed on a 
white cloud over many waters into heaven. Another, 
on his deathbed, saw the spirit of the saint rising to 
heaven, and cried, " Tarry, father ; I come with thee," 
and fell back dead. The legend is charming which 
tells that larks, late in the evening though it was, 
hovered over the roof of his last dwelling. Two 
years before his death, so runs the story, it was 
revealed to him what the number of his days should 
be. 

Francis died on the eve of 3rd October 1226, and in 
1228 was canonised, when Ugolini, as Gregory ix., sat 
on the papal throne. The body was placed in the 
Church of St. George, and when it was being carried 
to its resting-place therein, it was taken past St. 
Damian, the abode of Clara and the Poor Sisters. The 
saint had asked in excess of humility, but the request 
was not heeded, to be buried in a spot where criminals 
were executed. 

In 1228, after the ceremony of canonisation, Gregory 
laid the foundation-stone of a magnificient basilica, 
dedicated to the memory of the saint, to which the 



ST. FRANCIS 63 

body was ultimately removed; and legend tells that 
down in the depths, below the church, Francis in 
deep meditation, with blood in the stigmata, waits 
for a resurrection which will take him back to earth. 
The pope appointed the 4th of October as the feast of 
Francis, enjoining the people to keep it, that they 
might benefit by his merits. 

Nothing is more significant of the reverence, even 
though mixed with superstition, in which the saint 
was held by later generations than the fact that, to 
use the words of Wiclif : " Thei teachen lordis and 
namely ladies that if thei dyen in Franceys habite, 
thei schul nevere cum in helle for vertu thereof." 
Catherine of Aragon may be named as one of the 
ladies who, at a later day, put on the habit of 
the Order. It was, however, the love of money 
which made the friars teach that burial in their 
cloisters was, like bounty to the Order, a sure 
means to salvation; and multitudes believed the 
teaching. 

Dante, in the case of Guido di Montefeltro, showed 
the popular belief that Francis visited hell to rescue 
those girt with his cord — 

" I was a man of arms, then Cordelier, 

Deeming that I, so girt, might make amend ; 

And true enough that deeming might appear, 
But that the High Priest — evil be his end ! — 

Sent me back 'yet again to former crime ; 

Then Francis came, when I had passed death's gate, 

For me ; but one of those swarth cherubin 
Said, 'Take him not; defraud not my estate." 5 

The Dominicans also taught that grace was to be 



64 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

found through wearing their official apparel. Thus 
Milton speaks — 

" Dying, put on the weeds of Dominic, 

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised." 

At the date of the translation of the body a scheme 
of indulgences was devised for all visitors to the 
church. The Minorites afterwards claimed Gregory's 
injunction as the first of nineteen bulls, granted at 
various times, which assured indulgences to such 
visitors. The Dominicans, in like manner, claimed 
that similar privileges were given to all who aided 
them in erecting their buildings. To such uses were 
Francis and Dominic brought. 

Next to the Rule the most significant writing of 
Francis is the Will or last Testament, which Renan 
with insufficient reason has pronounced a forgery. It 
is even more significant, inasmuch as it is the teaching 
of the man untouched by any representative of the 
Church, a return to the simplicity in which the 
Brothers were first associated. Reverence towards 
priests, obedience to the superiors of the Order, and 
strict adherence to the Rule are enjoined. There is once 
more insistence on poverty ; and it is strange to find 
the command that no bull from Rome, not even one 
ensuring the personal protection of the friars, is to be 
accepted. The Brothers are to work, and here there is 
evidence of the saint's attitude to mendicancy : — " and 
when they do not give us the price of the work, let us 
resort to the table of the Lord, begging our bread from 
door to door." 

Whatever may have been the relations of Francis to 
Rome, and especially to Ugolini, there is in the Testa- 



ST. FRANCIS 65 

ment, even while honour is directed to be paid to 
priests, a last cry for that imitation of Christ through 
poverty and simplicity to which the great ecclesiastics 
were deaf. The writer himself describes his Will as " a 
reminder, a warning, an exhortation." He required 
that nothing should be taken from or added to it, and, 
though this reassertion of the primitive freedom of the 
Brotherhood was in opposition to many precepts of the 
Rule, he enjoined that the Rule and Testament should 
be read together. 

Francis never directly opposed the Church, and 
against its policy had no distinct counterplan; but 
nowhere was it more clearly shown than in the Will 
that his heart was not in sympathy with the violent 
changes made in the organisation and purposes of the 
Order. With his last words he emphasised the principles 
of labour, poverty, and love which had governed the 
Brothers when first they went out into the world. 

In spite of austere poverty there was in Francis 
none of the gloom of asceticism. The Troubadours had 
fascinated him in his youth, and there was ever the 
element of joy in his religion. It is possible to isolate 
some of his words, and to argue that there was even a 
Manichsean basis to his thought. " Many when they 
sin or are injured," he said, " blame their enemy or 
neighbour. This should not be so, for everyone has 
his enemy in his power, namely, the body through 
which he sins." In a threatened conflict with demons 
— as Francis in common with all saints named certain 
spiritual experiences — he welcomed them, saying his 
body was his worst enemy, and that they could do 
with it whatsoever Christ would permit ; and, on 
another occasion, he described his body as his most 
5 



66 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

cruel enemy and worst adversary, whom he would 
willingly abandon to the demons. On the other side, 
we hear him saying, " I have sinned against my brother 
the ass," and understand that he had been too severe 
to his body. Again, with an insight unusual in 
medieval days, he doubted " whether he who had de- 
stroyed himself by the severity of his penances could 
find mercy in eternity." Yet he attributed to the 
devil the words : " Francis, there is no sinner in the 
world whom, if he be converted, God will not pardon; 
but he who kills himself by hard penances will find no 
mercy in eternity." There was no thought of the 
devil, however, when he carried bread to one who 
had fasted to the serious injury of health. The friar 
would not eat, whereat Francis, breaking the bread, 
ate of it himself, and said : " Take not the eating, but 
the love, my brethren, for your example." Francis 
was not speculative, and the popular metaphysic, so 
far as he knew it, dominated him. In conduct, how- 
ever, he adopted simplicity, and less than many saints 
indulged in excess of fasting. To make him like unto 
Christ, legend tells that on one occasion he fasted 
forty days and forty nights, eating no more than one 
half loaf. On the other hand, there is a description in 
the Little Flowers of the chapter of the Brothers, at 
which Dominic was said to be present, and it is told 
how men came " with sumpter beasts, horses and carts, 
with loads of bread, of wine, of honeycombs, and 
cheese, and other good things to eat, according as the 
poor of Christ had need." The absence of austerity 
from the religion of Francis is seen from another 
passage of the Little Flowers, which, though it may be 
unfounded, illustrates the impression created by the 



ST. FRANCIS 67 

saint. He was told at the chapter — that at which pro- 
vision was so abundantly made for the wants of " the 
poor of Christ" — that many of the Brothers "wore 
shirts of mail on their bare flesh, and bands of iron, 
for the which reason many were weak and some were 
dying thereby, and many were let and hindered from 
prayer. Wherefore Saint Francis, like a most prudent 
father, commanded by holy obedience that whoso had 
either shirt of mail or band of iron should take it off 
and lay it down before him, and even so did they." 

The saint, while certainly not emancipated from 
the religious or ethical ideas peculiar to his age, was 
no lover of extremes. Assuredly he did not see that 
asceticism, sacrifice for sacrifice' sake, could not be 
acceptable to Him who asked for the broken spirit 
and the contrite heart. On the other hand, his poverty 
was intended as an imitation of Christ, and he did not 
starve like some zealot of the fields, or torture his flesh 
with many stripes that he might be healed. Such 
customs could not be included in an imitation of 
Christ; and thus there is no revolting picture of 
emaciation or self-violence. It is of moment, in under- 
standing the man, to note that cloister life was not 
his ideal. He knew the meaning of the prayer of the 
Lord, not to take men out of the world, but to keep 
them from the evil thereof ; and through the world he 
went as one with a mission, despising the ease of the 
convent, and choosing rather to find salvation in seek- 
ing the lost than to nurture his own soul far off from 
earthly interests. 

Francis was never so separated from the spirit of 
his age as to be free from sadness in his theology. 
Speculation on the doctrine of sin and contemplation 




68 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of the physical sufferings of Christ characterised 
cloister theology, and influenced the whole of 
medieval religious thought. Yet the genius of Francis 
kept him from morbid imaginations. Ruskin, who 
understood him, has used words which do not repre- 
sent the saint. " Now the gospel of works," he says, 
" according to St. Francis, lay in three things. You 
must work without money, and be poor. You must 
work without pleasure, and be chaste. You must 
work according to orders, and be obedient." Work 
was to be without pleasure, not that the worker should 
be sad, but that he should be kept from the vulgar 
ends of labour. More truly it may be said that joy in 
life, not the gloom of asceticism, was characteristic of 
Francis; and in that joy there was a lyric element. 
He sang as he went abroad on his missionary journeys. 
He knew and loved French, and had sung the Trouba- 
dour songs, the melody of which was in his heart, if 
the words could not be on his lips. A charming legend 
relates that heavenly music floated through his cell 
when he desired comfort, and there was no human 
hand to touch an instrument for his delight. The 
Canticle of the Sun, or the Canticle of the Creatures, as 
it is also called, is attributed to Francis, though there is 
no reference to it till, in 1385, it was quoted by Bar- 
tholomew of Pisa. The verse is irregular, and yet there 
is a tradition that Francis had it revised by Brother 
Pacifico, the king of verse, as he has been styled. 
The lyric feeling of a singer and the aspiration of a 
religious man are alike visible, and since the author 
speaks, as Francis was wont to do, of the sun as his 
brother, the moon as his sister, and the earth as his 
mother, there is no reason to doubt that he was the 



ST. FRANCIS 69 

author. Matthew Arnold's translation may be quoted 
as the version of an English poet : — 

" Most High, Almighty, good Lord God, to Thee 
belong praise, glory, honour, and all blessing ! 

"Praised be my Lord God with all His creatures, 
and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the 
day and who brings us the light ; fair is he, and shines 
with a very great splendour : O Lord, he signifies to 
us Thee ! 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and 
for the stars, the which He has set clear and lovely in 
heaven. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and 
for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the which 
Thou upholdest life in all creatures. 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is 
very serviceable unto us, and humble and precious and 
clean. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through 
whom Thou givest us light in the darkness ; and he is 
bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong. 

" Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the 
which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth 
divers fruits and flowers of many colours, and grass. 

" Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one 
another for His love's sake, and who endure weakness 
and tribulation ; blessed are they who peaceably shall 
endure, for Thou, O Most Highest, shall give them a 
crown. 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the 
body, from which no man escapeth. Woe to him who 
dieth in mortal sin ! Blessed are they who are found 



70 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

walking by Thy most holy will, for the second death 
shall have no power to do them harm. 

" Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto 
Him, and serve Him with great humility." 

It is said that the verse regarding pardon and peace 
was written on account of a dispute between the Bishop 
and the magistrates of Assisi, and that when the 
Brothers sang it in the city the adversaries were re- 
conciled. Francis' love of song inspired his companions, 
and in this fashion, more than by actual authorship, 
he influenced the rise and progress of Italian vernacular 
verse. He and certain of his friars may be styled with- 
out hesitation the originators of that verse. Of the 
Canticle of the Sun, Ozanam, in Les Poetes Franciscains, 
has said : " Ce n'est qu'un cri ; mais c'est le premier 
cri d'une poesie naissante, qui grandira et qui saura se 
faire entendre de toute la terre." In tracing the in- 
fluence of the Franciscans on early Italian literature, 
this writer mentions, in addition to the saint himself 
and the authors of the Little Flowers, the unnamed 
Brother Pacifico, who had been a Troubadour, and 
Giacopone di Todi — 

" That son of Italy who tried to blow, 

Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song." 

The Dies Irae has, not without plausible reason, been 
ascribed to Thomas of Celano, the biographer of Francis. 
Giacopone di Todi was a lawyer, who on the death of 
his wife joined the Third Order of the Minorites. For 
ten years he feigned madness, that he might secure ill- 
treatment in which to exercise patience, and then 
became a friar. The Stabat Mater Dolorosa was his 



ST. FRANCIS 71 

work, and in another direction he gained notoriety 
by his satires against Boniface VIII. Not the least, 
certainly, of the services which Francis and his fol- 
lowers rendered to Italy was the use of the vernacular 
as a vehicle for the expression of lyric feeling. " The 
beginnings," says Matthew Arnold, "of the mundane 
poetry of the Italians are in Sicily, at the Court of 
kings ; the beginnings of their religious poetry are in 
Umbria, w r ith St. Francis. His are the humble upper 
waters of a mighty stream : at the beginning of the 
thirteenth century it is St. Francis ; at the end, Dante." 
Harnack, in his History of Dogma, thus characterises 
the influence of the mendicants on poetry : " A lyric 
poetry that awakens a response in us exists only from 
the thirteenth century, and what force the Latin and 
German tongues are capable of developing in describing 
the inner life we have been taught by the mendicant 
monks. From the discernment that lowliness and 
poverty, scorn and contempt, shame and misery, suffer- 
ing and death, are aids to the saint's progress, from the 
contemplation of the man Jesus, from compassion, and 
pain, and humility, there sprang for Western Chris- 
tianity, in the age of the mendicant monks, that inner 
elevation, and that enrichment of feeling a,nd of moral 
responsibility, which were the condition for all that 
was to grow up in the time that followed. One 
speaks of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and 
comprehends in these words, taken together, the basis 
of our present-day culture; but both have a strong 
common root in the elevation of religious and aesthetic 
feeling in the period of the mendicant monks." 

The personification of the sun and moon and wind 
in the Canticle was more than a mere literary figure. 



72 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Francis was love-intoxicated, touching all nature with 
his sympathy. The world was not for him harsh and 
hateful, given over to the Evil One. It was a world 
with God everywhere, with all things His, and there- 
fore to be loved. Even to death, sister death, as a 
divine servant, he extended his courtesy. " But now 
we have to speak," says Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, 
" of the Third Religion, grounded on reverence for 
what is beneath us. . . . But what a task was it, 
not only to be patient with the Earth, . . . but 
also to recognise humility and poverty, mockery and 
despite, disgrace and wretchedness, suffering and death, 
to recognise these things as divine." One seems to 
hear in these words an echo of the famous Canticle ; 
and Francis, one may believe, furnished Goethe with 
the content of the Third Religion. The habit of 
courtesy had been fostered in Francis by acquaintance 
with the knightly customs of the Troubadour songs. 
Doubtless there was a suggestion of artificiality when 
he addressed the wind as his brother, and of sentiment- 
ality when he spoke of sister death ; yet the large 
heart and glowing piety of the man shone forth in his 
gentleness to animals, as when he spoke to the birds 
that had gathered round him. There were birds on 
the ground, and others flew down from the trees, and 
all remained quiet while he said : " My little sisters, the 
birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, 
and alway in every place ought ye to praise Him, for 
that He hath given you liberty to fly about every- 
where, and hath also given you double and triple 
raiment ; moreover, He preserved your seed in the 
ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of 
the world ; still more are ye beholden to Him for the 



ST. FRANCIS 73 

element of the air which He hath appointed for you ; 
beyond all this, ye sow not, neither do you reap ; and 
God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams and 
fountains for your drink, the mountains and the 
valleys for your refuge and high trees whereon to 
make your nests ; and because ye know not how to spin 
or sow, God clotheth you, you and your children ; 
wherefore your Creator loveth you much, seeing that 
He hath bestowed on you so many benefits ; and 
therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin of 
ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto 
God." Biographers have related how the birds 
gathered round St. Gall and St. Columba, but in the 
whole calendar of saints there has been no one with a 
sympathy keener than that which Francis had for 
birds and beasts. Very charming is the story of the 
swallows. Once, when preaching, he could not make 
himself heard for their chirping. " It is," he said, " my 
turn to speak, little sister swallows, hearken to the 
word of God ; keep silent and be very quiet until I 
have finished." A leveret which had been caught in a 
trap he thus addressed : " Come to me, brother leveret." 
Touched with its sorrow, he extended to it that 
sympathy which he had ever ready for the afflictions 
of men. " If I could only be presented to the 
emperor," he said on one occasion, " I would pray him, 
for the love of God and of me, to issue an edict 
prohibiting anyone from catching or imprisoning my 
sisters the larks, and ordering that all who have oxen 
or asses should at Christmas feed them particularly 
well." " The sermon to the birds," says Sabatier, 
" closed the reign of Byzantine art, and of the thought 
of which it was the image. It is the end of dogmatism 



74 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

and authority; it is the coming in of individualism 
and inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to 
be followed by obstinate reactions, but none the less 
marking a date in the history of the human conscience." 
That sermon, says Renan, with amusing disdain of 
elaborate systems, is "le resume de toute bonne 
theologie." "I should myself think the clergyman," 
says Ruskin in " The Lord's Prayer and the Church," 
" most likely to do good who accepted the ^a^ rfj zrfasi 
so literally as at least to sympathise with St. Francis' 
sermon to the birds, and to feel that feeding either 
sheep or fowls, or muzzling the ox, or keeping the 
wrens alive in the snow, would be received by their 
Heavenly Father as the perfect fulfilment of His ' Feed 
my sheep ' in the higher sense." 

Love was to Francis the beginning and end of religion, 
and religion was no mere service at the altar of the 
Church, no mere repetition of prayers within its walls. 
His love found its inspiration in Christ, and it extended 
to all that he conceived to be His, to the poor and unfor- 
tunate, to the birds and beasts, even to the sun and wind, 
and to death itself. He is not less to be admired, not less 
of a saint, because he had, as he seems to have had, his 
dream of domestic affection. There is a charming 
childishness, and at the same time, a revelation of the 
pathos of unfulfilled desires, in the story that one of 
the Brothers saw him in the moonlight make seven 
figures of snow, and heard him say : " Here is thy 
wife, these four are thy sons and daughters, the other 
two are thy servant and handmaid ; and for all these 
thou are bound to provide. Make haste, then, and 
provide clothing for them, lest they perish with cold. 
But if the care of so many trouble thee, be thou 



ST. FRANCIS 75 

careful to serve the Lord alone." His pious imagina- 
tion was touched by the scene of Bethlehem where 
Christ was born. The humility of that birth quickened 
in him the desire for poverty ; and the ox and the ass 
that stood at the Master's crib warmed his affection for 
animals. With the papal consent he introduced into 
the Christmas services in the chapels of the Order 
representations of the surroundings of the Saviour's 
birth, means not the least potent to excite devotion. 

It is not mere fancy to designate Francis the 
inspirer of the great artists from Cimabue and Giotto 
to Raphael. Before he appeared as a preacher of 
religion, it has been well said, God in Christ, Christ in 
God, was far off from the world ; but he showed the 
man Christ, and made men feel their own kinship with 
God. What was divine could be set forth only through 
that which was human. And for this teacher nature 
was God's, and man and nature were not at enmity. 
Then again, in his preaching the old religious world 
with its lawgivers, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and 
saints became alive once more ; his vivid imagination 
quickened the dead, and they walked on earth. As 
Christ inspired His apostles who carried His gospel 
over the world, so Francis gave his message to his 
friars, who, having seen Christ as man, and God in the 
world and in man also, and having felt the presence of 
the heroes of religion, were faithful to their charge ; 
and, as one says, Giotto, who heard the message, began 
the art of the Renaissance. Poetry and painting, apart 
from religion proper, caught an inspiration from the 
saint, and, like piety itself, were quickened into 
newness and fulness of life. 

A modern writer on Dante, after referring to the 



76 FRANCiS AND DOMINIC 

tradition that that poet was in Assisi when Giotto 
was painting his frescoes, says : " Note the singularly 
Dantesque sjanbolism of these frescoes, the Tower of 
Chastity, with her true servants driving off the blind 
Cupid with his arrows, emblem of sensual love, into 
the abyss. . . . Observe the Centaur, cowed, in his 
brute strength, by the law of obedience ; while Pru- 
dence (in its full platonic sense as including all ethical 
wisdom) presents, after a Janus fashion, on one 
side her severity and on the other her goodness, — and 
the conclusion is, I think, legitimate, as far as any 
conclusion from circumstantial evidence can be, that 
there was some link closely connecting one period 
of Dante's life with the influence of the Franciscan 
Order." Let this conclusion be admitted, and there is 
the fact that Francis inspired the poetry which was 
represented in its grace and strength by Dante, who in 
turn left his impress on the art of Giotto, a painter 
quickened by the genius of the saint. 

In Francis' private life there was a touch of almost 
romantic spiritual affection for Clara of the Poor Ladies. 
The Rule permitted him to see her but seldom, yet when 
he was in trouble he went to her for sympathy ; and 
her prayers were constantly offered on his behalf. On 
one occasion, and one only according to the record, 
Clara desired to visit Francis and eat with him. For 
a time he would not receive her, till, hearing of her 
grief, his companions said to him : " Father, it seemeth 
that this sternness is not in accordance with divine 
charity ; hearken now unto Clara, a virgin, holy and 
beloved of God. It is but a little thing that she asks 
of thee, to eat with her ; and she, at thy preaching, 
forsook all that the world offers of joy and society and 



ST. FRANCIS 77 

wealth/' Francis at last agreed, ordering preparations 
to be made in the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, 
where Clara had taken the vow of poverty. Clara 
arrived with one of the nuns, and found the feast 
spread upon the floor. The meal was much more than 
the breaking of bread, as Francis talked of God and 
His love in such fashion that the friends forgot to eat. 
The meeting, if it ever took place, was one of the 
charming incidents in the lives of these two saints 
of the Order of Poverty. Their names are linked 
together like Jerome and Paula, Benedict and his 
sister Scholastica, in ecclesiastical history ; like Dante 
and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, in literature; and 
many have deemed the affection of Francis and Clara 
more than spiritual, an offering on that altar of God 
which not seldom has received the sacrifice of the 
most tender love. 

Poverty was the watchword of Francis, summing up 
for him all active virtues. Before his day religion was 
little more than attention to the observances of the 
Church. He, on the other hand, was the preacher of 
personal piety. His love flowed to Christ, and conduct 
was an imitation of His sacred life. Dominic in the 
same manner sought to invite men to religion, 
preaching the gospel and teaching the truths of the 
Church's dogma. Francis chose to preach, but also to 
show forth the beauty of holiness by imitation of 
Christ. The end sought by the two saints alike was 
to stimulate piety, not by drawing men to the cloister 
for contemplation, but by keeping them in the world 
for the practice of righteousness. 

The mendicants, while acting as the servants of the 
Church, unintentionally fostered the tendency to 



78 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

criticise ecclesiastical pretensions and priestly pro- 
fessions, and to examine the validity of the dogma. 
Stimulated to piety, the soul found freedom and 
rejoiced, and in its freedom took up the task of 
testing authority, and the Reformation was the far-off' 
result. Taught by the mendicants that religion must 
govern conduct, men listened to their doctrine, and 
inquired, and thought, and judged. 

A clear insight into the religion of Francis, or at 
least of the good friars with whom the story originated, 
is obtained from the chapter of the Little Flowers 
which is styled, " How, as Saint Francis and Brother 
Leo were going by the way, he set forth unto him what 
things were perfect joy." Though one should perform 
all miracles, the saint said, such as giving sight to 
the blind, or making the deaf to hear, one would not 
therein find perfect joy. Then going on with Brother 
Leo, Francis continued, that though one knew all 
tongues and all sciences, one would not therein find 
perfect joy. Then again he said, that though one 
should speak with the tongue of angels and know the 
courses of the stars, one would not therein find perfect 
joy. Going still farther on his way, he cried aloud : " O 
Brother Leo, albeit the Brother Minor could preach so 
well as to turn all the infidels to the faith of Christ, 
write that not therein is perfect joy." Then Brother 
Leo besought him saying : " Father, I pray thee in the 
name of God that thou tell me wherein is perfect joy." 
Francis thereupon pictured himself and Leo, wet and 
cold and dirty and hungry, at the gate of St. Mary of 
the Angels, and the porter reviling them as no true 
men, and bidding them be off; and declared : " If there- 
withal we patiently endure such wrong and such 



ST. FRANCIS 79 

cruelty and such rebuffs without being disquieted and 
without murmuring against him, and with humbleness 
and charity bethink us that this porter knows us full 
well, and that God makes him to speak against us ; O 
Brother Leo, write that herein is perfect joy." Con- 
tinuing, he spoke of them as thrown down and beaten 
and suffering with patience and gladness, thinking on 
the pains of the blessed Christ, and thus concluded : " O 
Brother Leo, write that here and herein is perfect joy. 
Then hear the end of the whole matter, Brother Leo : 
Above all graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit that 
Christ granteth to His beloved, is to overcome oneself, 
and willingly for the love of Christ endure pains and 
insults and shame and want." 

The lesson thus taught was a lesson in obedience to 
the Sermon on the Mount, to the command " resist not 
evil." Obedience to Christ and imitation of Him, in- 
spired by love, were the very essence of the religion of 
Francis. Saints before him had been consumed by 
adoration of the Saviour, and in truth had destroyed 
their manhood in the contemplation of the cloister. 
But he was not consumed. Filled he was with a passion 
which led him to conquer himself, and to go forth to 
those whom Christ's own love embraced. That which 
Francis taught was taken by his followers, and set 
forth in the verse of poets like Giacopone di Todi, 
and the prose of mystics like Bonaventura. It is the 
doctrine that poverty and humility, insult and shame, 
suffering and death may, by an inspiration derived 
through contemplation of Christ, become helps to the 
progress of the soul. The mean things of life may lose 
their vileness, and minister unto salvation. 

Writers such as Renan in France, Thode in Germany, 



80 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

and Kuenen in Holland, have associated the names 
of Buddha and Francis. The Eastern sage and the 
Western saint each stepped beyond the bounds of 
formal religion, each sought through poverty, through 
a renunciation of all material possessions, to be free 
from the tyranny of a sordid world, and each tried 
through mastery of the body to secure direction of 
himself. Of less importance in the parallel, each had 
associated with him a band of mendicant monks. But 
there was a difference. Buddha was a thinker, this way 
and that dividing the things of the spirit, and few 
there were who found him. Francis was a poet, his 
thought kindled by feeling, his life artistically shaped 
by love ; and he was to many as another Christ, perfect 
through poverty, humility, and love. 



CHAPTER IV 

St. Dominic 

Dominic, whose name is found in the famous Order, 
was born in the year 1170, in the Castilian village of 
Calaruega. His father Felix, it is generally said, was 
a member of the ancient house of Guzman; and his 
mother, Joanna of Aza, was also of noble birth. She 
was noted for piety, and through the intercession, we 
are told, of St. Dominic of Silos, a son was born to her 
when her two eldest boys had entered the cloister. 
This child was named Dominic. Before his birth she 
beheld him, according to the legend, as a black and 
white dog, grasping with his mouth a torch which 
illuminated the whole world ; while his godmother saw 
him with a star on his forehead and another on his 
neck, in token that he would give light to East and 
West. The boy was reared in an atmosphere of religion, 
and the record is ample of his precocious piety, and 
the miracles which attended his infancy. He left his 
bed at midnight to kneel in prayer on the floor, and 
answered his nurse that for this he had come. 

" Silent and wakeful oft in midnight's gloom 
He by his nurse was seen upon the ground, 
As though he said, ' To this end have I come.' " 

On one occasion a swarm of bees settled on his lips, 
6 



82 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

to foretell his eloquence. In his fifteenth year he was 
sent to the public school or university of Palencia, 
where he continued for ten years. Tales of his charity 
are narrated. Finding a woman unable to purchase 
a friend's release from captivity, he offered himself to 
be sold that money for a ransom might be obtained. 
Again, in a time of famine, he parted with his books 
and furniture that he might buy bread for the hungry. 

Having left Palencia, Dominic, at the desire of the 
bishop, became one of the canons regular attached to 
the Cathedral of Osma ; and in a short time his austerity 
and piety won for him the place of sub-prior, under 
Diego de Azevedo, who was to exercise a lasting influ- 
ence on his career. His favourite book at this period 
was the Collationes of Cassian, a writer in the early 
part of the fifth century, who dealt with the spirit and 
aim of monasticism. 

The first event of public interest in the life of 
Dominic was the association in 1203 with Azevedo, 
at that time Bishop of Osma, in an embassy to arrange 
a royal marriage. Crossing the Pyrenees, they passed 
through Languedoc, and were witnesses of religious 
degradation and priestly apathy in that territory 
which now forms a part of France. When they had 
completed the business of the embassy and were return- 
ing to Spain, they visited Rome. There the bishop 
sought release from the duties of his see that he might 
proceed as a missionary to certain wild tribes in Hun- 
gary. Innocent III. refused this request, and the bishop 
and his companion continued their homeward journey. 
At Montpellier they met the papal legates who were 
conferring as to the heresy disturbing the district. 
They were told that poverty was a special feature of 



ST. DOMINIC 83 

the life of the heretical teachers ; and it became evident 
to the bishop, from the suits and trappings of the 
legates, that the failure of the Church was largely due 
to the pomp and style of the representatives. He 
forthwith advised the legates to endeavour to gain the 
hearts of the people through the practice of piety and 
humility and earnest preaching of the gospel. To 
give an example, he dismissed his retinue, keeping only 
Dominic by his side, and resolved to remain, that he 
might declare the faith of the Church. Innocent was 
now willing to sanction his absence from his see, in the 
hope that something might be done to overcome the 
evil menacing the Church. Azevedo accordingly entered 
on his missionary labours, with Dominic as his assistant 
and companion. 

During the reign of Innocent, in spite of papal 
supremacy, — in consequence, rather, of the long strife 
for political power, — heresy was widespread in England, 
France, Germany, Belgium, Italy itself. The heretics 
were divided into sects, differing in creed and worship, 
yet united in their opposition to the Church. The 
worldly policy of Rome made her heedless of the 
religious wants of the people, and the spiritually 
destitute turned to new teachers and welcomed the 
old biblical truths, and sometimes fantastic or novel 
doctrines. Reformers within the Church denounced 
its worldliness : heretics outside sought its destruction. 
The scandalous life and worldly spirit of multitudes of 
the clergy, in spite of all attempts at reform, produced 
revolts against this doctrine or that, against eccles- 
iastical authority, and against ceremonies performed 
by discredited priests, y Thus Peter de Brueys, who 
was ultimately burned by an infuriated clergy, had a 



84 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

following who believed with him that there should be 
no infant baptism ; that the doctrine of the real presence 
was untrue ; that the worship of the cross, the venera- 
tion paid to churches, and prayers for the dead, should 
cease. Peter de Brueys' work in Languedoc was con- 
tinued by Henry the Deacon, and Bernard of Clairvaux 
was commissioned to counteract him. Bernard's piety 
and eloquence were destructive of heresy, but his report 
of the condition of the local Church was disturbing 
information for Rome. He described " the churches 
without people, the people without priests, the priests 
without respect, the Christians without Christ, the 
churches deemed synagogues, the holy places of God 
denied to be holy, the sacraments no longer sacred, the 
holy days without their solemnities." Peter de Brueys 
may be taken as the type of men who denied dogmas 
and condemned ceremonies, without at the same time 
setting forth positive doctrines alien to Christianity. 
The most spiritual of the opponents of the Church 
were the Waldensians, who, according to an anonymous 
writer of the thirteenth century, were the forerunners 
of the Franciscans. " There arose," this writer says, 
"two monastic Orders of the Church, . . . the Fran- 
ciscans and the Dominicans, which were approved of, 
perhaps, on this account : because two sects which still 
exist had arisen in Italy, one of which called itself the 
Humiliati, and the other the Poor Men of Lyons. . . . 
I saw, at that time, some of their number, who were 
called Poor Men of Lyons, at the apostolic see, . . . they 
were trying to get their sect confirmed and privileged. 
Thejr went about through the towns and villages say- 
ing, forsooth, that they lived the life of the apostles, 
not desiring to have any possessions or any fixed 



ST. DOMINIC 85 

dwelling-place." Peter Waldo of Lyons, with whose 
name the Waldensians are associated, seeking to lead 
the life in Christ, distributed his goods to the poor, 
and began to preach the gospel. Causing a translation 
of parts of the New Testament, and also of " Sentences " 
from the Fathers, to be made, he distributed these by 
the hands of disciples sent out, two by two, to teach 
and to preach. Poverty and simplicity of religious 
ceremony were the distinctive marks of the Walden- 
sians. They did not spare the reputation of the clergy, 
and being subjected to persecution, appealed to Pope 
Alexander III., who approved their poverty but con- 
demned them for preaching. The time had not come 
for sanctioning an irregular ministry. A few years 
later, at the Council of Verona, Pope Lucius ill. ex- 
communicated them as heretics. This condemnation, 
however, did not end their progress. They were 
charged with holding that the authority of popes and 
prelates should be repudiated, that laymen and women 
could preach, that masses for the dead were useless, 
and that prayers were as efficacious in a private room 
as in a church. These Poor Men had undoubtedly 
characteristics which were reproduced in the Minor- 
ites, and Francis could not have been ignorant of their 
ways, seeing that Assisi was no isolated village, and 
Bernardine, at anyrate, would carry home the news 
gathered as he travelled from place to place. 

Dominic, on his part, was probably influenced by 
them, as by the more violent sectaries, to make use of 
preaching as a means to strengthen the power of the 
Church. The Waldensians, like the Puritans of Eng- 
land, were earnest men ; but their religion banished 
joy, and so their progress was limited. 



86 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

The most noted sect was the Cathari, sometimes 
styled Patarines in Italy, known as Albigenses in 
Languedoc. Tinctured with Manichseism, they were 
hardly to be called Christians. Such as they were, 
they marked a fierce opposition to the Church, rather 
than a return to primitive Christianity. In the 
seventh century Manichseism, modified into Paulician- 
ism through St. Paul's teaching regarding sin, was 
formulated into the creed of an Eastern sect. The 
Paulicians multiplied with extraordinary rapidity, and, 
according to Gibbon, " shook the East and enlightened 
the West." Under persecution many found their way 
to Europe, where they spread their doctrines. After a 
long period of eventful history Paulicianism, at the 
close of the twelfth century, had conquered what is 
now Southern France. 

In creed, ethic, ritual, and ecclesiastical government 
the Cathari were opposed to the Church. They made 
an eternal dualism and conflict between the alleged 
coequal principles of good and evil, between God and 
Satan. Satan was the Jehovah of the Old Testament, 
and therefore that book was to be rejected. The New 
Testament was to be received, though, in spite of its 
representations, Christ was a mere phantasm. In 
consequence of matter being essentially evil, marriage 
was all but forbidden, and animal food, for its grossness, 
was avoided. Sacraments, images, crosses found no 
place in the ritual, while a new ceremony, the Baptism 
of the Spirit, removed all sin. The organisation of 
the sect was peculiar to itself. From among the 
" Perfect," a spiritual aristocracy, four classes of officers 
were chosen to carry on the government. 

The Albigenses, named from the territory of the 



ST. DOMINIC 87 

Albigeois, or, more generally, the Cathari, were pre- 
eminently the heretics in the eyes of Churchmen, and 
even of the Waldensians ; and Innocent, in his day of 
power, determined to crush them. They were zealous 
in their missionary efforts, preaching their distinctive 
doctrines and inveighing against the Church, and while 
the pope was resolving on their destruction, Azevedo 
and Dominic opposed them with the orthodox faith. 
As early as 1119 Calixtus II. condemned the Cathari 
as heretics. In 1139, at the second Lateran Council, 
Innocent II. called upon the temporal powers to crush 
them; and Pope Alexander in., at Tours in 1163, 
ordered all prelates to anathematise those trafficking 
with them, and required secular authorities to im- 
prison them, confiscating their property. At the third 
Lateran Council a crusade was inaugurated, but came 
to nothing. Shortly after Innocent in. ascended the 
papal throne active measures were begun. Legates, 
Peter of Castelnau and Raoul, Cistercian monks, joined 
by Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, were sent to Languedoc 
to rouse the Churchmen to persecuting zeal. 

Eager to uphold ecclesiastical authority, and having 
the support of the papal power, they yet failed to stir 
the prelates, who were content to draw their revenues ; 
and the story of the Church's weakness would have 
been illustrated once more had not the legates in 
1206 come into contact with Azevedo and Dominic. 
" Heresy," said Innocent, in spite of his cruel policy, 
" can only be destroyed by solid instruction ; it is by 
preaching the truth that we sap the foundations of 
error." Inspired by this idea, if not by these words, 
the legates, with Azevedo and Dominic, carried on public 
disputations, preached in the churches, and held con- 



88 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

ferences in private houses. Zealous in work and per- 
sistent in humility, they made many conversions. 
Dominic, his biographers relate, was a powerful 
preacher, and the heretics, counting him their most 
dangerous enemy, threatened his life. Miracles 
attended his manhood, as they had been about his 
youth. The heretics, we are told in the legend, paid 
no heed to the Feast of St. John the Baptist; and 
Dominic threatened a sign of divine anger to certain 
men who on the feast-day were working in a field. 
When one of them would have made an attack on the 
preacher, the ears of corn were seen to be filled as 
with blood. Thereupon the men fell down and made 
confession of their sin, and shortly afterwards were 
reconciled to the Church. Many conventional miracles, 
such as this, were attributed to Dominic, but they 
afford no indication of his character. 

At this period Dominic took the important step of 
organising at Prouille a convent for women. The 
heretics had established religious houses in which they 
educated the daughters of nobles, who were glad to 
avail themselves of instruction; and Dominic, after 
the manner of these men, opened the house at Prouille, 
in order that his female converts might be freed from 
temptation to heresy. The Archbishop of Narbonne 
and the Bishop of Toulouse, to whom the scheme was 
made known, contributed liberally to the building of 
the convent; and in 1218 Honorius III. recognised this 
association of women as the Second Order of Dominic. 
The members, who were to live obedient to a severe 
monastic rule, came in course of time to devote them- 
selves chiefly to the education of girls. 

The preachers who laboured among the heretics, 



ST. DOMINIC 89 

zealous though they were, found themselves unequal 
to their task. With papal permission, therefore, they 
ordained competent men, wherever they could be 
found, and thus was associated, not an Order, but a 
company to meet heretical with orthodox doctrine. 
While many of the Cathari were restored to the faith, 
real progress was slow, since the charge was constantly 
preferred that clerics, high and low, were everywhere 
disgracing their calling. 

What might have been the result of this mission 
none can tell, as it was completely overshadowed by 
the crusade inaugurated for the violent suppression of 
the Albigenses. The legate, Peter of Castelnau, was 
murdered in 1208, and Kaymond, Count of Toulouse, 
suspected of sympathy with the Albigenses, and 
inefficient, in the eyes of the Church, as a destroyer 
of heretics, was charged with complicity in the 
murder, Innocent, full of wrath, did not lose the 
opportunity of calling on the faithful to avenge the 
death of the legate. A crusade was preached, and 
not in vain. Carnage began, and the victims were 
numbered by tens of thousands. The king of France 
did not himself become a soldier of the Church, but 
his nobles, and among these Simon de Montfort, led 
their troops against the enemies of their religion. 
The war was the most cruel and bloody that ever 
disgraced the Church; and the teaching of the 
merciful Son of Mary was despised. For the king 
of France, however, the crusade was more than the 
battle of the Church : it was a long campaign which 
resulted in the acquisition of vast territories. 

Little is known of Dominic's career during the years 
of the crusade. An early biographer wrote : " After 



90 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the return of the Bishop Diego to his diocese St. 
Dominic, left almost alone with a few companions who 
were bound to him by no vow, during ten years upheld 
the Catholic faith in different parts of Narbonne, 
especially at Carcassonne and Fanjeaux. He devoted 
himself entirely to the salvation of souls by the 
ministry of preaching, and he bore with a great heart 
a multitude of affronts, ignominies, and sufferings for 
the name of Jesus Christ." Again, it is told how on 
one occasion he was at the mercy of certain men who 
sought to kill him. Asked afterwards what he would 
have done had they attacked him, he replied : " I would 
have prayed you not to take my life at a single blow, 
but little by little, cutting off each member of my 
body, one by one ; and when you had done that, you 
should have plucked out my eyes, and then have left 
me so, to prolong my torments and gain me a richer 
crown." Fanatical though the teller of this story was, 
he illustrated the bravery of Dominic's character, which 
was real ; and at the same time spoke according to the 
common belief, that through much physical tribulation 
one might enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

Contemporary documents are few which afford 
definite information regarding the first years of 
Dominic's missionary labour. There is an absolution 
of 1207 showing, from the signature with the addition 
praodicator minimus, that in that year he was entitled 
to sign himself a preacher. From a writing of 1208, 
a penance for one of the Cathari seeking admission 
into the Church, it may be gathered that he was then 
at work among the heretics. The penance required 
that on three successive Sundavs the man should be 
scourged by a priest, that he should fast at definite 



ST. DOMINIC 91 

times from various foods, hear mass and recite a speci- 
fied number of prayers daily, be chaste in conduct, and 
wear monastic garments decorated with the cross. 
Another document, said to be among the archives of 
Carcassonne, is witnessed by " Brother Dominic, Canon 
of Osma and humble preacher," and bears that the Bishop 
of Cahors in 1211 paid homage to the Count de Montfort. 

The historians of the Order imply that the victory 
of the Count de Montfort, at the famous battle of 
Muret in 1213, was due to the prayers of Dominic; 
or, as others say, to his encouragement of the soldiers 
by holding aloft a crucifix. The constant tradition is 
that Dominic was with the crusaders ; but the silence 
of history may be taken as proof that he did nothing 
extraordinary throughout the time when the heretics 
were massacred in multitudes. 

It is stated, but with insufficient evidence, that 
thrice during this period Dominic refused episcopal 
office. While the accounts of his success as a preacher 
are exaggerated, it may be conjectured from what is 
known of his character that he laboured with zeal, 
fasting and praying, showing humility and inflicting 
self -punishment, and using the noblest means, as then 
understood, to call back the wanderers to the fold. 
His work attracted the attention of Pierre Cella, a 
wealthy citizen of Toulouse, who in 1214 presented 
a house for use as a school for the education of 
preachers. For the support of this house, and the 
purchase of books, certain tithes were designed by 
the local bishop ; and when Dominic and his com- 
panions took up their abode in it an important step 
was taken towards the formation of the Order. 

Some of the older historians relate that, prior to the 



92 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

year 1214, Dominic founded the famous office of the 
Inquisition, and became the first inquisitor-general. 
The ground for this assertion is a bull of Sixtus v., 
which refers to him as inquisitor under Innocent III. 
and Honorius III. His character, however, does not 
suggest that he was guilty of the severity which 
established the Inquisition. Piety wanders in strange 
directions, and zeal for the Lord's house not seldom 
eats up humaneness ; yet Dominic's piety would not 
have directed him to the slaughter of his religious 
enemies, if some of the alleged miracles indexed 
his character. These miracles displayed a pitiful 
and humane man, and were in fact palpable imita- 
tions of the Lord's. Jordan, his early biographer, has 
no mention of the Inquisition. When summing 
up Dominic's work among the heretics, he wrote : 
" During the time that the crusaders were in the 
country the blessed Dominic continued there, diligently 
preaching the word of God, until the death of the 
Count de Montfort." The Inquisition was certainly 
not organised till after the death of Dominic; and, 
during the period of his missionary labour in the 
south of France, there is no indication that Churchmen 
possessed the legal power of ordaining the punish- 
ment of torture or death. It is probable, however, 
that Dominic had a title belonging to bishops, and 
granted to legates and special commissioners, to assign 
ecclesiastical punishment. The notoriety gained by the 
Dominicans in connection with the Inquisition doubtless 
suggested to fanatical chroniclers that Dominic him- 
self earned the glory of destroying enemies of the faith. 
The Bollandists are among those who associate 
Dominic with the Inquisition, quoting Thomas Aquinas 



ST. DOMINIC 93 

as justifying the burning of heretics. There is, how- 
ever, no document to prove that he ever received a 
commission as inquisitor ; and if the Lateran Council 
in 1215 did grant such a commission, it is to be 
noted that by that year his labours in Languedoc 
were almost finished. In 1217, in a speech at Prouille, 
quoted by Lacordaire, he used words which, while 
manifesting pitiless anger, do not suggest that his 
own labours had been marked by violence. " For 
many years," he said, " I have spoken to you with 
tenderness, with prayers, and tears; but according 
to the proverb of my country, where the benediction 
has no effect, the rod may have much. Behold, now, 
we rouse up against you princes and prelates, nations 
and kingdoms ! Many shall perish by the sword. 
The land shall be ravaged, walls thrown down ; 
and you, alas ! reduced to slavery. So shall the 
chastisement do that which the blessing and which 
mildness could not do." The speech gives truth to 
Dante's characterisation — 

"Therein the zealous lover was revealed 

Of Christ's true faith, the athlete consecrate, 
Kind to her friends, to those who hate her steeled." 

According to the legend, Dominic, appointed inquis- 
itor-general in Spain, organised the punishment of 
Jews and Moors lapsing from the Christian faith 
into which they had been forced, and watched on 
one occasion the burning of three hundred victims. 
Leaving Spain, he passed to Italy by Aragon and 
France, establishing the Inquisition in these countries, 
and commissioning Conrad of Marburg to organise it 
in Germany. 



94 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Noticeable in the history of Catholic devotion is 
the introduction of the rosary, with which Dominic's 
name has been associated. Controversy has been 
busy with the claim made for the saint. There 
seems sufficient reason, however, to trace back to 
his institution the use of the rosary so prevalent in 
the Order. The story of the introduction is thus 
told in a recent biography : " We read that when he 
was preaching to the Albigenses, St. Dominic at first 
obtained but scanty success ; and that one day, com- 
plaining of this in pious prayer to our Blessed Lady, 
she deigned to reply to him, saying, ' Wonder not that 
until now you have obtained so little fruit by your 
labours ; you have spent them on a barren soil, not 
yet watered with the dew of divine grace. When 
God willed to renew the face of the earth, He began 
by sending down on it the fertilising rain of the angelic 
salutation. Therefore preach my Psalter, composed of 
one hundred and fifty angelic salutations and fifteen 
Our Fathers, and you will obtain an abundant 
harvest.' " 

Dominic and his companions, when they took pos- 
session of the house gifted to them in Toulouse, 
followed the Rule, as they wore the habit, of canons 
regular. His purpose was to found an Order of 
preachers who should be trained in theology. Learned 
though he himself was, after long study in his early 
years, he did not become the teacher of his companions, 
but placed them under a theologian lecturing in 
Toulouse. Further support was given by De Mont- 
fort, who bestowed on the companions the revenues 
from a house and lands. 

Dominic's determination to institute an Order re- 



ST. DOMINIC 95 

quired papal sanction, and that sanction he resolved 
to seek in 1215, when the Lateran Council was sitting 
in Rome. Individuals like Arnold of Brescia, and 
missionaries like the Waldensians, had come into 
direct contact with the hearts and minds of the 
people, and had not trusted to the authority of an 
institution or the mystic influence of an elaborate 
ritual. The Church, on the other hand, amidst the 
political schemes of popes and the worldly interests 
of priests, had left unheeded the command to preach 
the gospel. Preaching was at once the special func- 
tion and duty of the bishops, and though it could be 
delegated they seldom preached and seldom appointed 
others to the duty. In the periods when heresy was 
rife, the prelates, as a rule, lived as temporal princes, 
seeking the supremacy of the Church or trying to 
extend its glory by the splendour of cathedrals and 
abbeys. Scandalous living had soiled the reputation 
of many, and the best were filled with the idea of 
political power. They had little interest in the 
welfare of the people, and were too few, even had 
they all been preachers, to fill the pulpits of Chris- 
tendom. The parish priests were performers of the 
ritual devised to bring the truths of Christianity 
before the worshippers, and ignorant performers they 
too often were. The growth of the sects and the 
spread of heresy were the eloquent witnesses of the 
neglect of duty ; and never did monk or priest render 
service to the Church and to religion more signal than 
that of Dominic when he resolved that preaching 
should not be left to heretics and sectarians. 

As early as 1031 the Council of Limoges had decided 
that preaching should not be confined to churches where 



96 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the bishops could occasionally officiate. At Avignon, 
in 1209, when heresy was rampant, the bishops were 
instructed to be diligent in preaching, and to secure 
men fit to be instructors of religion ; and in the 
Lateran Council of 1215, before the significance of 
Dominic's scheme was apparent, it was enacted that 
the bishops, who should not and could not be the only 
preachers, should provide men competent for the work. 
Thus did the Church recognise the need of preaching, 
but it did nothing to educate men in theology or train 
them as speakers. Innocent had approved the plan of 
Durand of Huesca, who instituted the Poor Catholics, 
to do inside the Church the evangelising work which 
the Poor Men of Lyons were doing outside. Durand, 
who had been a Waldensian leader, was brought back 
to the Church after a disputation in which the Bishop 
of Osma, and probably Dominic, took part. Devoting 
himself after his conversion to a life of poverty, 
chastity, and severe self-discipline, he gathered round 
him men fitted to preach ; but sanctioned though it 
was by Innocent, the mission did not commend itself 
to the prelates in Southern France, who looked with 
disdain on zealots intruding into their province, and 
charged them with being Waldensians in heart, in 
spite of their profession. After the battle of Muret 
the situation was altered, and Dominic took advantage 
of the change. He saw that the Poor Catholics had 
a true conception of missionary work, and if he did 
not imitate them, he and his Order at least suc- 
ceeded them. Filled with their spirit and living in 
their simplicity, he went further, and had his associates 
specially trained to preach. Orthodoxy was to be 
armed to meet heresy. This was the plan of Dominic, 



ST. DOMINIC 97 

but it interfered with an episcopal function, and 
difficulties had to be removed before the papal sanction 
could be gained. 

Dominic was welcomed in Eome by the pope and 
prelates, as he had laboured among the heretics whose 
case constituted an important reason for holding 
the Lateran Council. Very easily he obtained a 
decree for placing the Convent of Prouille under the 
protection of the papal see. The sanction of a new 
Order, however, was not to be had for the asking. 
The Council had issued a decree against the founda- 
tion of new Orders ; but a vision, repeating the scene 
in which Francis appeared, showed Innocent the 
Lateran Basilica supported by a man whom he 
recognised as Dominic. The vision was enough, and 
the crave of Dominic's petition was granted, with the 
limitation that he and his friends, while pursuing 
their special plans, should ally themselves to one of 
the existing Orders. Innocent is credited with sug- 
gesting the name Brothers Preachers, which was after- 
wards adopted. To carry out the instruction, Dominic 
chose the Rule of Augustine, as its simplicity allowed 
the Preachers to pursue the object for which they 
had associated. Besides, Augustine was a scholar, and 
his name was attractive to men desirous of theological 
learning. Monastic discipline, with its fasting and 
poverty, was to be practised, and regulations were 
made in regard to study and the government of the 
schools. 

The Brothers numbered sixteen, and, strange to say, 

represented the nationalities of Castile, Normandy, 

France, Languedoc, England, and Germany. An abbot 

was chosen, the first and only one ; and then the 

7 



) 



\ 



98 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

organisation was changed, and provincial friars, with 
a general-master, w r ere appointed. Very early in 
their history, in 1217, the Brothers disputed about 
certain tithes. This dispute, which occurred during 
Dominic's absence, did not imply a violation of the 
oath of poverty. The Brothers Preachers had taken 
no such vow, though some of the old chroniclers 
would have us believe that at this stage certain 
properties, which the friars could not hold, were 
transferred to the nuns of Prouille. 

Having chosen the Augustinian Rule, and established 
the Brothers in their first convent, Dominic set out for 
Rome, to present himself to the pope. Before he 
reached the city, however, he learned that Innocent 
had died at Perugia, and Honorius in. now sat on the 
papal throne. Honorius adhered to the policy of his 
predecessor, and granted in 1216 a bull constituting 
the Order by taking it under the protection of 
St. Peter and the Bishop of Rome, and confirming it in 
its lands, churches, and revenues. 

A shorter bull is also declared by the Dominicans to 
have been issued at the same time. It is as follows : 
" Honorius, Bishop, . . . we, considering that the 
brethren of your Order will be the champions of the 
faith and true light of the world, do confirm the Order 
in all its lands and possessions present and to come ; 
and we take the Order itself, with all its goods and 
rights, under our protection and government." This 
bull, with its praise of the friars, could not have been 
granted in 1216. In 1296, at a chapter of the Order, it 
was ordained that it should be borne by the friars in 
proof of their mission, and probably was prepared for 
this purpose. 



ST. DOMINIC 99 

Dominic returned to Toulouse in 1217, and at once 
entrusted special work to the Brothers, so that they 
should not be mere recluses. One of his first concerns 
was to choose men for a mission to Paris, the chief seat 
of theological learning; and others he sent to Spain. 
In subsequent years convents were established in 
Oxford and Bologna, noted as university cities. The 
house in Toulouse was left almost empty when the 
missions were organised, though spiritual recruits soon 
occupied it, and in turn were sent forth as preachers. 
Dominic himself did not remain in Toulouse, as he was 
anxious to establish a convent in Rome. When he 
arrived, Honorius welcomed him, bestowing on him the 
use of the Church of St. Sixtus, afterwards the centre 
of the first Dominican monastery in Rome. The church 
was subsequently transferred to the nuns of Tra- 
stevere, and Dominic took possession of the Church of 
St. Sabina, attached to the palace of the Savelli, to 
which family the pope belonged. Success crowned his 
labours, inasmuch as many joined him as friars, and 
his preaching was a victorious campaign. At this 
period an office was created for him. In the papal 
palace the servants of the cardinals and others were in 
the habit of loitering while awaiting their masters. 
To these servants he turned his attention, suggesting 
to the pope that spiritual instruction should be given. 
Honorius agreed, appointing him Master of the Sacred 
Palace, and giving him permission not only to preach 
to the loiterers, but also to deliver formal lectures to 
the members of the Court. Thus was constituted the 
office of Master of the Palace, which has continued 
to be filled by Dominicans. 

According to tradition, a Third Order, bearing the 

LofC. 



ioo FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

name of Dominic, was at this time established. The 
members of the First Order were friars, those of the 
Second nuns, while the Third constituted a company 
for the defence of the Church. This Militia of Jesus 
Christ, thus it was styled, was formed when the Polish 
bishops, in 1218, appealed to Honorius for protection 
against the Prussians. On the other hand, we are 
assured by tradition that Dominic, seeing the 
Albigenses appropriating ecclesiastical property, had 
already declared in favour of armed protectors of the 
Church. At a later period, when force was no longer 
needed for the Church, the militia was changed into 
the Order of Penance of St. Dominic, and women were 
received as members. Its purpose was to infuse piety 
into social life, to practice penance and charity, and to 
realise monastic ideals amidst the business of the day. 

Another version is given of the foundation of the 
Third Order. 

In 1209 the members of a military society, the 
Militia Christi, attached themselves to Dominic, then 
labouring among the Albigenses. They undertook the 
defence of the Church ; and women were associated, 
who engaged in special religious exercises. The society 
increased, spreading as far as to Italy; and in due 
time, when military aid to the Church was no longer 
required, it became the Third Order of St. Dominic. 
Whatever may have been the beginning of that Order, 
there is distinct evidence of its existence about the 
year 1230, and it is possible that it may have been 
organised in imitation of the Franciscan association. 

Nicholas iv., in 1289, attempted to place the 
Dominican society and other associations of a like 
kind under the superintendence of the Minorites. 



ST. DOMINIC 101 

Doubtless the pope, who had been the Franciscan 
minister-general, hoped to increase the importance of 
his Order ; but the Dominicans, who were strong, 
would not countenance the scheme, and it failed. 

Dominic, having carried out the work of erecting a 
convent at Rome, was not forgetful of the various 
settlements which had been elsewhere established ; 
and, like a father mindful of his sons, went to Spain, 
the south of France. Paris, and Bologna. The new 
Order had justified itself, and many of the scholars of 
the universities consequently joined it, convinced of 
the need of the Church becoming a teaching institu- 
tion. He is represented as having planned for him- 
self a mission to Africa. Such a mission, while 
it may have been* thought necessary by biographers 
jealous of St. Francis with his journey to Egypt, 
was not according to Dominic's first aim, to attack 
heresy at home. His progress from place to 
place is represented by his biographers as a con- 
spicuous success, marked by many conversions and 
signal miracles ; and such was the zeal of the preacher, 
that we may well accept the story of the conversions. 
" He preached/' says Jordan, " by night and by day in 
houses, in the fields, and by the roadside." His theme 
was the mysteries of the rosary, the life and passion 
of Christ, Miracles were numerous, and of all kinds. 
By the application of a little mud he mended the torn 
garments of a Franciscan walking with him. He 
promised rain when a long drought was causing 
distress in the district of Segovia, and before his 
sermon was ended there was a plentiful shower. He 
foretold the death of an insolent councillor who spoke 
evil of him. He turned water into wine, as his Lord 



102 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

had done. In a fit of passion he killed a cock which 
disturbed him at his study, and in his penitence his 
fervent prayer restored it to life. He was able to 
cure a woman stricken by a fever, by causing her to 
eat a portion of an eel over which the sign of the cross 
had been made. 

In the year 1220 the first chapter of the Order was 
held at Bologna, a fitting place of meeting for a learned 
Brotherhood. An important resolution was taken : it 
was determined that all possessions should be 
renounced, that the customs of poverty should be 
adopted, and all property not absolutely necessary for 
the use of the Order should be given to the nuns of 
Prouille. The Dominicans in their first years had 
accepted gifts, and in 1218 a papal recognition of their 
property was issued. Dominic himself received three 
churches from the Bishop of Toulouse. The adoption 
of the principle of stern poverty was made, there is 
no reason to doubt, in imitation of the practice of the 
Franciscans. It is unnecessary to suggest any rivalry, 
but Dominic was not ignorant of the reverence which 
Francis was inspiring, and was wise enough to see that 
by poverty his own preachers would command respect. 

The friars of Toulouse in vain objected to the 
innovation, and in 1228 the resolutions of 1220 were 
formally included in the Constitution of the Order. A 
change in the habit was also sanctioned at the chapter 
of 1228. At first the dress was that of the Canons 
Regular, but owing to a vision of one of the Brothers a 
new habit was adopted. Brother Reginald was sick, 
and one day Dominic prayed earnestly for his recovery. 
While he was still suffering, the Virgin with two young 
maidens of surpassing beauty appeared to him, and 



ST. DOMINIC 103 

Mary said : " Ask me what thou wilt, and I will give it 
thee." One of the maidens suggested that he should 
ask nothing, but trust to the pleasure of the Virgin, 
who, after granting certain spiritual blessings, showed 
him the habit of the Preachers, saying : " Behold the 
habit of thy Order." One of the Dominican 
biographers writes : " After the heavenly vision afore- 
said, and the showing of the habit, the blessed 
Dominic and the other brethren laid aside the use of 
surplice, and took in its place as a distinctive portion 
of the habit the white scapular, retaining the black 
mantle which they wore over their white tunics as 
Canons Regular." 

After the meeting of the chapter, Dominic journeyed 
through Italy, and in the course of his wanderings 
reached Cremona, where, according to one legend, he 
met Francis and Clara. Another legend declares that 
the two saints met in Rome in 1215, but the evidence 
is insufficient, as there is no certainty that Francis 
was in Italy in that year. The story is that while 
Dominic was praying in the Basilica of St. Peter he 
saw the figure of Christ holding three arrows, with 
which He was about to punish the world for its 
wickedness. Mary was then seen to present two men to 
her Son, who should convert sinners and appease His 
wrath, and the next day Dominic recognised Francis 
as one of the two men of the vision. " You are my 
comrade," he said, " you will go with me ; let us keep 
together, and nothing shall prevail against us." 
According to a Franciscan account, the two met in 
Rome, when Dominic persuaded Francis to give him 
his cord with which he girded himself, suggesting at 
the same time that their religion should be one, and 



104 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

that there should be union between them. Francis 
would not listen to the suggestion ; he would continue 
in his poverty and his freedom. 

At Cremona, as related in the Dominican legend, the 
two saints lodged together, and water was brought 
from a well which had become unfit for use. They 
were asked to bless it, and there was a contest which 
should yield to the other. The modesty of Francis 
prevailed, and Dominic gave the blessing. In the 
Little Flowers it is related that Dominic was present 
at the meeting known as the " Chapter of the Trellises." 
Francis commanded the Brothers to take no thought 
of the needs of the body, but to trust for everything 
to God. There were some thousands in attendance, 
and yet the people of the surrounding cities supplied 
all their wants, inspired by the " Chief Shepherd, 
Christ, the Blessed One." Dominic, who at first thought 
Francis indiscreet, witnessed all that happened, and 
was moved to make this confession : " Of a truth 
God hath especial care of these holy poor little ones, 
and I knew it not ; and from now henceforth I promise 
to observe the holy gospel poverty ; and in the name 
of God I curse all the Brothers of my Order who in 
the said Order shall presume to hold property." This 
legend has evidently grown out of the fact that the 
Dominicans in their chapter of 1220 adopted the 
custom of absolute poverty. 

The fatigues, vigils, and fastings of a busy life wore 
out the strength of a man who thought it impious to 
pay heed to his body, and in 1221, in the fifty-first 
year of his age, Dominic died. He had walked from 
Venice to Bologna, careless of the heat of an August 
sun, and with strength failing through the poison of 



ST. DOMINIC 105 

fever he entered the Convent of St. Nicholas. There 
he refused the comfort of a bed, and lay on matting 
on the floor. The Brothers gathered around him he 
addressed, saying : " Have charity, guard humility, 
and make you treasure out of voluntary poverty." 
Hoping to save him, some of them carried him to a 
house on a hill outside the city ; but nothing could be 
done, beyond the administration of the last rites of his 
religion. He wished to be buried beside his Brothers. 
" God forbid," he said, " that I should be buried any- 
where save under the feet of my brethren." According 
to another version, he died in the bed of one of the 
friars, as he had no bed of his own, and he was dressed 
in a gown which he had borrowed. 

Cardinal Ugolini performed the burial service, in 
the Church of St. Nicholas, Bologna, and wrote this 
epitaph over the tomb — 

" Here lies the body of the venerable servant of God, 
Dominic de Guzman, born at Calaruega in Spain, in 
the diocese of Osma; founder of the Order of Friars 
Preachers, of which he was made first master-general 
by Honor ius ill., and confirmed in that dignity by the 
suffrages of his brethren, in the chapters held here in 
Bologna in 1220 and 1221. On the 30th of May of 
the latter year he was declared a citizen of Bologna, 
together with all others who should succeed him as 
master-general of the Order. He slept in our Lord 
at noon on Friday, August 6, 1221, under the pontificate 
of Honorius in., and I, Ugolini, Cardinal Bishop of 
Ostia, and Apostolic Legate, after having celebrated 
his obsequies, have herewith by our hands placed his 
venerable body. May the name of the Lord be praised 
for ever ! " 



106 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Signs of divine approbation were said not to be 
wanting. At a translation of the body, when the 
coffin was opened those standing near declared they 
were conscious of an exquisite odour. Three hundred 
years after the first translation, a writer declared, 
"this divine odour adheres to the relics even to the 
present day." There is one legend, obviously an imita- 
tion of the story of Francis, that in a grotto in 
Segovia, Dominic received the stigmata. 

Chroniclers of the Order tell that one of the friars 
saw the Saviour and the Virgin drawing up a golden 
ladder which had been let down from heaven. On the 
ladder was a man, with face hidden by his cowl, who 
in this fashion was being raised from the earth. The 
hour of the friar's vision was the hour of Dominic's 
death. 

Dominic's habits of pious life, according to his bio- 
graphers, were severe to the last degree. He kept an 
almost continual fast, wore the poorest raiment, and 
never slept in a bed, but lay on the bare ground or on a 
plank. Little time was given to sleep, and hours taken 
from sleep were spent before the altar, where he would 
offer with his prayers the sacrifice of his own blood, 
scourged from his body. 

Dominic founded his Order and lived to see its 
success. At the date of the second chapter, four years 
after the first mission had been sent out, sixty convents 
had been established in the provinces of Spain, Pro- 
vence, France, England, Germany, Hungary, Lombardy, 
Romagnuola. Great though the work of the founder 
had been, he was not immediately canonised. The 
canonisation of Francis and Antony of Padua, in each 
case, took place within two years after the death. Yet 



ST. DOMINIC 107 

thirteen years passed before the Church paid its highest 
tribute to the work of Dominic; and it has been 
argued that there is proof in this that his influence on 
his contemporaries was not the strongest. Apart from 
saintship, he deserves honour. In an age when the 
people were ignorant of the Bible, when the priests of 
the Church were dumb, he trained men to preach, and 
he himself preached, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Though 
honour was slow to crown him after his death, super- 
stition and reverence together were ultimately to pay 
adoration to his name. His mother was recognised as 
a saint, and in 1320 a prince of Castile obtained her 
body to increase the sanctity of a Dominican convent 
which he had founded. The remains of his father 
had to be concealed from the adoration of admirers of 
the saint, who prized as holy everything related to 
him. So great was the veneration attaching to his 
name, that the font in which he was baptized was 
preserved and ultimately taken to the Dominican 
Convent of Madrid, where it continued to be used at 
the baptisms of the royal infants. 

In the work of Dominic there was no originality, 
and he, earnest indeed to the last degree, was no self- 
reliant personality eager for an unconventional ideal. 
His ardent faith in the moral value of obedience made 
him useful to the Roman Curia, and he was able to 
prove himself a faithful servant by accepting the 
Augustinian Rule. Innocent, it is true, had little 
opportunity of knowing his character, but Honorius, 
probably at the instigation of Ugolini. took care to 
attach him to the papal Court. 

There was no magnetic power of love in Dominic 
to draw men to him, even while zeal and goodness 



108 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

directed his labours. He lacked the one thing needful, 
whatever it was, which Francis had, to make captive 
the heart. Yet the biographers, doubtless moved by 
the stories of Francis, have endeavoured to prove him 
like unto Christ. A recent biography illustrates the 
attempt to mark a physical resemblance between him 
and the Saviour : " Although several so-called portraits 
are preserved, yet none of them can be regarded as 
the vera effigies of the saint, though that preserved 
at Santa Sabina probably presents us with a kind of 
traditionary likeness. If we compare this with the 
engraved gem which professes to be the true portrait 
of Jesus Christ a certain resemblance may be traced 
between them, especially in the straight line of the 
nose and forehead, which, according to the rules of 
Greek art, was deemed to belong to the highest type 
of humanity." 

That which has been specially imitated, however, in 
the biographies of the saint is the miraculous power 
of Christ. Sinlessness, constant prayer, unwearied 
vigils, degradation of the body, have been ascribed to 
a multitude of saints, but to this man, in special 
manner, have been assigned wonders after the pattern 
of the New Testament miracles. Signs were given to 
show that God was on his side, that heaven and earth 
ministered to his necessities ; yet the characteristic of 
his legend is the imitation of the deeds peculiar to 
Christ. 

At Bologna on one occasion bread was scarce for the 
Brothers, and after the saint had raised his eyes and 
his heart to heaven there appeared two beautiful 
youths with baskets of the whitest loaves, which they 
distributed. On another occasion, when he had no 



ST. DOMINIC 109 

money to pay his fare for crossing a river, he prayed, 
and instantly there was a coin at his feet. As the 
Lord had increased bread for the multitude, so did 
Dominic cut two small loaves in pieces for a large 
number of Brothers, and the morsels were more than 
enough for their wants. Wine, too, was supplied in a 
vessel, in which before his prayer there had not been 
a drop. A youth who fell from a roof and was killed 
was restored to life, and this youth's mother being 
sick of a fever was healed. Three Sisters in a convent, 
whom he did not see, he ordered to be cured, and at 
the command they rose in perfect health. 

By miracles such as these his biographers have tried 
to show his likeness to Christ. Had he been the stern 
suppressor of heretics, their violent destroyer, it is 
more than likely that the wonders would have taken 
another form; and though we reject one and all of 
the supernatural deeds attributed to him, we may 
surmise from their record that he was not a violent 
inquisitor, even though we dare not say that he had 
in special degree the loving-kindness of Christ. 

The Franciscan extravagance of sentiment which 
produced the Book of Conformities had a parallel in 
the fanaticism which made Dominic one with Christ. 
The Dominican who wrote the life of Catharine of 
Siena represented the Eternal as producing Christ 
from His head and Dominic from His breast, and as 
declaring the equality of the two. 

It is not Dominic's character that has impressed 
itself on history : it is his policy which has caused his 
influence to live. He was not the first to suggest that 
the Church should send out preachers to oppose heresy ; 
but it was he who saw that men, skilled in debate, 



no FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

equipped with knowledge as well as furnished with 
enthusiasm, and ready to be obedient to ecclesiastical 
rule, were the men to serve the Church from the attacks 
of heretics. And not merely did he seize an idea, 
propound a scheme ; he had the genius for organising, 
and. true to his idea of a learned ministry, gathered 
men around him for study, arranged for the education 
of others, and sent his disciples or scholars forth into 
the world. It is impossible that without persuasive 
and convincing powers of some kind he could have 
attracted men to his Order ; but the scheme which he 
set forth was precisely that to commend itself to 
intellectual and spiritual men anxious for the great 
institution of the Church which to their thinking was 
divinely built. The scheme was destined to affect the 
whole later medieval religious movement ; and though 
the Dominicans, especially through their connection with 
the Inquisition, acquired a reputation which was not 
altogether one of holiness, yet the founder of the Order 
was wise when he taught that heresy must be met 
with learning and educated wisdom, and strong when 
he organised a company of men trained in theology 
and sent them forth to meet the critics and enemies of 
the Church. 



CHAPTER V 

Progress of the Orders 

"Silent and soft is poverty's step/' sang Giacopone 
di Todi. The rise of the mendicants marked a religious 
revival, and inaugurated a mission which extended the 
bounds of the Church. The founders of monastic 
Orders had retired with pious companions from the 
world, and excluded themselves from the life of the 
people. Francis and Dominic sought to free them- 
selves from worldly cares and pleasures alike, when 
they embraced poverty; but recognising the need of 
a mission to the spiritually destitute, sent their friars 
into the villages and cities. Eeligion was popularised, 
and passed beyond the confines of the cloister. The 
object was the same, to create and foster piety in the 
individual, but the method and sphere of the two 
saints were different. Francis turned to the poor and 
unlettered, to whom he determined the gospel should 
be preached, not by learned but by pious men. Dominic 
trained his friars in theology, preparing them for ser- 
vice among the richer and more intelligent classes, and 
fixing his principal houses in the university cities. The 
rise of the mendicants was, says Baur, " the practical 
declaration that even the monks had not acquitted 
themselves of their task until, while remaining true 

to their fundamental positions, they had ceased to live 

111 



H2 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

for themselves, and after the manner of the apostles 
had striven to labour in the world for the purposes of 
the Gospel." The Benedictines, to take an example, 
were wealthy, cultured, exclusive, with no neighbours to 
tend. They looked first to their own spiritual welfare, 
and sought through contemplation to reach God, through 
asceticism ordered and limited to merit salvation. Such 
service as was done was rendered to the Church and 
her priests and friends. The Cistercians, to take another 
example, when reformation had restored purity and 
quickened piety, indulged in contemplation of the life 
of Christ, but restricted their imitation to the convent. 
Bernard, indeed, went forth into the world to preach a 
crusade, to attack a heretic, to direct a pope, but re- 
turned to the solitude of Clairvaux, where his religion 
was as strait as his cell. The mendicant like the monk 
pursued contemplation as a business of the soul, but 
contemplation led him to activity in imitation of Christ. 
Asceticism, too, was not altogether excluded. But no 
cloister seclusion was to impede the mission to sinners. 
Thus did the friar widen the sphere of the piety of 
the monk, passing beyond the monastery to serve his 
neighbour, to seek the lost that he might be saved ; 
and thus did imitation of Christ attain a richer mean- 
ing. The friar, too, taught the laymen that they also 
had a mission to men and women around them, even 
while they heeded the things of their own souls ; and 
so the kingdom of God was advanced. 

Hallam expressed an uninformed opinion of his day 
when he wrote : " These great reformers, who have 
produced so extraordinary an effect upon mankind, 
were of very different characters : the one, active and 
ferocious, had taken a prominent part in the crusade 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 113 

against the unfortunate Albigeois, and was among the 
first who bore the terrible name of inquisitor ; whilst 
the other, a harmless enthusiast, pious and sincere, but 
hardly of sane mind, was much rather accessory to the 
intellectual than to the moral degradation of his 
species." Ferocious misrepresents the character of the 
man who laboured for the welfare of the Albigeois 
before the crusade was inaugurated, and who still 
laboured during the crusade, preaching the love of 
God and salvation through His Son. Francis was not 
mad. Bonaventura wrote : " Who can form a concep- 
tion of the fervour and the love of Francis, the friend 
of Christ ? You would have said that he was burned 
up by divine love, like charcoal in the flames." But 
Bonaventura was a Franciscan and medieval. A modern 
English writer, a master of criticism, free from religious 
enthusiasms, has spoken of the " profound popular in- 
stinct which enabled Francis, more than any man since 
the primitive age, to fit religion for popular use. He 
brought religion to the people. He founded the most 
popular body of ministers of religion that has ever 
existed in the Church. He tranformed monachism 
by uprooting the stationary monk, delivering him from 
the bondage of property, and sending him, as a mendi- 
cant friar, to be a stranger and sojourner, not in the 
wilderness, but in the most crowded haunts of men, to 
console them and do them good. The popular instinct 
of his is at the bottom of his famous marriage with 
poverty. Poverty and suffering are the condition of 
the people, the multitude, the immense majority of 
mankind ; and it was towards this people that his soul 
yearned. " He listens," it was said, " to those to whom 
God Himself will not listen." 
8 



114 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Machiavelli, living amidst intellectual and spiritual 
influences very different from those around Matthew 
Arnold, declared in one of his discourses that Chris- 
tianity would have been almost extinct " if Francis 
and Dominic had not renewed it and replaced it in 
the heart of men by poverty and the example of 
Jesus Christ. They saved religion, which the Church 
had destroyed." 

Francis saw, as clearly as Dominic, that a remedy 
was needed for the malady attacking religion; and 
though he had no plan for refuting heresy, he sought 
to overcome worldliness and sin by inducing men to 
live in imitation of Christ. Filled with the love of 
Christ, he went to people such as those who heard 
Christ gladly, and they received him with joy. In 
the noble sense he was a popular preacher, proclaim- 
ing a gospel for the poor and desolate, for the simple 
and unlettered ; and while he taught, he did what he 
would have others do. Dominic was a preacher of a 
different kind, from character and training. Men, too, 
listened to him, and religion was quickened. 

Many of the Franciscans, especially in the early 
years of the Order, were unlettered, yet filled with an 
enthusiasm which captivated the poor, among whom 
they laboured. Formality was banished from their 
religious services, and in their simplicity they carried 
horns to summon the people to worship. The Do- 
minicans, on the other hand, were generally associated 
with churches, and followed the recognised ritual. 
They furnished the most noted preachers of the 
thirteenth century, and the extent of their influence 
is illustrated by the fact that in 1273 there were sixty 
preachers in Paris, of whom thirty were Dominicans. 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS n : 

In the revival inspired by the two Orders, religion 
was brought home to the hearts of individual men 
and women ; and labouring, as the friars did, under 
the authority of the pope, they fostered the interest 
of their hearers, not in priests or bishops, but in the 
Church of which the Roman Bishop claimed to be the 
head, so that it became to them as the visible kingdom 
of God. It was of no mean advantage to the cause of 
religion in the thirteenth century that seekers for 
truth were not bereft of their faith in the Church. 
To these it stood as an institution worthy of honour, 
and the pope was revered as the true vicar of Christ 
when he commissioned the mendicants to go to men 
and women and tell them of the love of God and the 
mercy of Christ. Apostles in earlier centuries had 
consecrated their labours to the conversion of the Jew 
and the Gentile ; but it was a new thing within Chris- 
tendom itself for missionaries to seek the lost and 
bring them to Christ. The mendicants, indeed, saved 
the Church from destruction following in the train 
of worldly policy, and spared Christendom a revolu- 
tion for which it was not prepared. Rome was not 
yet ready to depart from that policy, and Boniface 
viii. was to come. Political supremacy was not, 
however, the one sole plan of the Church in the 
middle of the thirteenth century, and evangelistic 
work was added to ecclesiastical business. But apart 
from institutions and policies, it is of outstanding 
importance in the history of Christianity that the 
mendicants helped men to know themselves responsible 
to God, and to recognise themselves as more than parts 
of a society finding God through ritual alone. 

In the dreams of Francis, it is said, was the vision of 



xi6 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

a brotherhood with members from all nations ; but a 
powerful Order, dominated by the Bishop of Rome, was 
not among his ideals. One morning, the Three 
Companions relate, he called the small fraternity- 
together, saying : " Take courage, and shelter your- 
selves in God. Be not depressed to think how few we 
are. Be not alarmed either at your own weakness or 
at mine. God has revealed to me that He will diffuse 
through the earth this our little family, of which He is 
Himself the Father. I would have concealed what I 
have seen, but love constrains me to impart it to you. 
I have seen a great multitude coming to us, to wear 
our dress, to live as we do. I have seen all the roads 
crowded with men travelling in eager haste towards 
us. The French are coming. The Spaniards are has- 
tening. The English and the Germans are running. 
All nations are mingling together. I hear the tread of 
the numbers who go and come to execute the commands 
of holy obedience. . . . We seem contemptible and in- 
sane. But fear not. Believe that our Saviour, Who 
has overcome the world, will speak effectually in us. 
If gold should lie in our way, let us value it as the 
dust beneath our feet. We will not, however, condemn 
or despise the rich who live softly and are arrayed 
sumptuously. God, who is our Master, is theirs also. 
But go and preach repentance for the remission of 
sins. Faithful men, gentle and full of charity, will 
receive you and your words with joy. Proud and 
impious men will condemn and oppose you. Settle it 
in your hearts to endure all things with meekness and 
patience. The wise and the noble will soon join 
themselves to you, and, with you, will preach to 
kings, to princes, and to nations. Be patient in 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS it 9 

tribulation, fervent in prayer, fearless in labour, and 
the kingdom of God, which endures for ever, shall be 
your reward." 

Dominic, unlike Francis, organised an Order, placing 
it under papal control, and though it was to see 
corruption it fulfilled the purposes for which it was 
established. Dante paid honour to the names of the 
founders of the two great mendicant Orders, not with 
prejudice, since elsewhere he showed the degradation 
of the friars — 

" Her, for her good, with two high chiefs endowed, 
That they on either side her guides might be. 
The soul of one with love seraphic glowed ; 
The other by his wisdom on our earth 
A splendour of cherubic glory showed." 

The bulls of Sixtus IV., issued in 1474 and 1479, 
marked the climax of the prosperity of the two 
Orders, which were spoken of as the two rivers 
flowing from Paradise, and as seraphim raised on 
wings of heavenly contemplation above all earthly 
things. Undoubtedly the purposes of Francis and 
Dominic attracted the greatest men of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, among whom were Alex- 
ander Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, 
Roger Bacon, and Duns Scotus. 

The missionary labours, the chief glory of the 
mendicants, were not confined within the pale of 
the Church. Dominic himself, it is said, desired to go 
to Persia, and though he did not pass out of Europe, 
he inspired his followers with a zeal which carried 
them to distant lands. After the death of the saint 
the Dominicans met in Paris in 1222, and elected as 



*/8 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

his successor Jordan of Saxony, who, in his short 
reign, extended the sphere and influence of the 
Brotherhood. Friars were sent to Germany, Venice, 
Poland, and Denmark, where houses were erected, and 
also to the Holy Land. Jordan himself was in the 
habit of spending his Lent alternately at Bologna and 
Paris, and of visiting other university cities, among 
these Oxford ; and at each place he preached to 
the students, and sought to induce masters and 
bachelors to join the Brotherhood. While he 
endeavoured to increase the austerities in the daily 
life of the friars, his reign was marked by evangelistic 
zeal rather than by asceticism, and he himself perished 
with some of his companions in an expedition to 
Palestine. In 1225 there was a mission of the 
Dominicans, as there was already one of the 
Franciscans, in Morocco ; and at the same period 
important work was done among the Nestorians and 
other Eastern schismatics. In 1237 the Dominicans 
gained distinction by bringing back some of the 
Eastern Jacobites to the Church. The labour which 
the Friars Preachers undertook was no easy task. 
Ninety of them perished at one time in Eastern 
Hungary; and yet there were ever men ready when 
new sacrifices were required. There is a legend, and it 
can be no more than a legend, that in 1316 some of 
the Dominicans reached the kingdom of Prester John 
in Abyssinia, where a church was established and one 
of the princes appointed inquisitor-general. After 
the conquest of America the Friars Preachers, true to 
their traditions, sent forth evangelists to Mexico, New 
Granada, and Peru. 

The Franciscans, no less than the Dominicans, were 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 119 

eager to convert the infidel. A bull of Alexander 
IV., of date 1258, was addressed to the friars 
among the Saracens, Pagans, Greeks, Bulgarians, 
Cumans, Ethiopians, Syrians, Iberians, Alans, Cathari, 
Goths, Zichori, Russians, Jacobites, Nubians, Nes- 
torians, Georgians, Armenians, Indians, Muscovites, 
Tartars, Hungarians, and also to those labouring 
among the Christians captured by the Turks. This 
list, which is not a geographical enumeration, is 
a witness of the extraordinary zeal of the Brother- 
hood. A bull of Clement VI., in 1342, gave the 
Franciscans the guardianship of the holy places of 
Jerusalem, and it was not unbecoming that those who 
bore the name of Francis should be protectors of 
places made sacred by Him whom the saint fervently 
loved and dutifully served. Later in their history the 
Minorites aided Columbus when he prepared his 
expedition, and at Hayti a Franciscan opened the first 
Christian church of the New World. 

Everywhere the missionaries wandered, and mar- 
vellous was the tale of their bravery. Marco Polo 
brought word of the good government of Kubla Khan, 
and Gregory x., in 1274, sent out two Dominicans 
to his kingdom. They, in 1289, were followed by 
two Franciscans, and one of these, Joannes de Monte 
Corvino, returning some years later, reported concern- 
ing his work. He had built a church with dome and 
bells in Cambalu (Pekin), had taught Latin and Greek 
to one hundred and fifty boys, and had converted six 
thousand people, preparing breviaries and psalteries 
for their use. He spoke of the tolerance of the native 
priests, adding that they were more to be admired 
than those of Italy. Raimund de Pennaforti, the 



120 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Dominican general, who died in 1273, demonstrated at 
once his love of learning and his practical wisdom 
when he founded schools at Tunis and Murcia for the 
training of friars in Oriental languages. No more 
intrepid ambassadors of Christ ever carried the gospel 
over the world than the followers of Dominic and 
Francis. Cardinal Newman has thus pictured them — 

" The friars, too, the zealous band 

By Dominic or Francis led, 
They gather and they take their stand 

Where foes are fierce or friends have fled." 

The life-work of a friar, in the years when the 
mendicants were quickening the piety of nations, may 
be illustrated from the biography of Antony of Padua. 
This man, whose fame was spread abroad while he 
lived, and not diminished when he died, was a 
Portuguese, who changed his name from Ferdinand to 
Antony on becoming a Minorite. He was educated by 
the Augustinians, joining their Order, but passed to 
the Franciscans when he heard that five of their 
number had been martyred in Morocco. His 
enthusiasm induced him to set out for Morocco, but, 
suffering shipwreck, he was forced to return to 
Europe. In Assisi he was fortunate to meet Francis 
himself, from whom he received a blessing, which was 
an inspiration. He was appointed to work in France 
and Italy. Soon he became distinguished as a 
preacher; crowds assembled to hear him ; the business 
of a town would cease for the hour that men might 
flock to him. In the legend it is related that a noted 
tyrant, Eccelino da Romano, prostrated himself at his 
feet. Antony's friends thought he would be done to 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 121 

death when he uttered the words : " How long, thou 
cruel tyrant, wilt thou continue shedding innocent 
blood ? Seest thou not the vengeance of God ready 
to overwhelm thee, the sword of the Lord drawn to 
smite thee ? Repent, or it will fall and destroy thee." 
Antony laboured with singular earnestness among the 
worldly and sinful in the Church, and at the same 
time met in argument the heretics whom he found in 
the cities of Italy. At all times he was strict in 
obedience to the Rule and customs of Francis, and 
strenuously opposed Elias of Cortona in his attempt to 
change the traditions of the Order. Broken in health 
by his fervour in preaching and the vicissitudes of the 
mendicant life, he retired to Padua, where at the 
early age of thirty-six he died. Shortly after his 
death, which took place in 1231, he was canonised, the 
first Franciscan, after the founder himself, to be made 
a saint. It is told of Antony that on one occasion the 
fish gathered to hear him preach, as did the birds 
in the history of Francis. It is also related that he 
was preaching at a general chapter of his Order 
when Francis appeared in the midst, his arms 
extended and in an attitude of benediction. 

The most eloquent of the first Dominicans was John 
of Vicenza, who, while a student of law at Padua, heard 
Dominic addressing a multitude in the great piazza of 
the city. Immediately after the sermon he forsook 
the study of law to receive the habit and enter the 
new Order. He was sent to Bologna, and afterwards 
returned to Padua, where he became famous. When 
he preached, crowds were attracted; and the legend 
has it that the angels were seen whispering in his ears, 
and that when he spoke of the rosary a bright rose 



122 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

appeared on his brow or a golden crown over his head. 
He was called the Apostle of Lombardy, and to him 
has been assigned the introduction of the well-known 
salutation, " God save you," by which he hoped to foster 
courtesy. The legend further relates that he converted 
one hundred thousand heretics by his tale of Dominic's 
life and miracles ; and that at Verona he addressed a 
multitude of three hundred thousand, assembled to 
swear peace, impressing them with Christ's words : 
" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." 
The story of the translation of the body of Dominic 
ascribes a special favour to this man. As he stood by 
the coffin he made way for a bishop, when the body of 
the saint turned in the direction of the great preacher. 
Again he moved, and again the body turned, that it 
might be seen that the saint counted sanctity higher 
than ecclesiastical dignity. An apostle of peace though 
Friar John claimed to be, he burned on one occasion 
sixty of the Cathari in the piazza of Verona. 

The history of the settlement of the Dominicans and 
Franciscans in England serves to show in detail how 
the mendicants entered upon a mission field. No 
minute account has been preserved of the arrival of 
the Dominicans, who preceded the Franciscans in 
their labours in England. In the year 1220 or 1221 — 
the date is disputed — Gilbert de Fraxineto with a 
company of twelve Dominicans was received by 
Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who 
tested their powers as preachers and was satisfied. 
Oxford, the seat of a university, was evidently their 
desired destination, as in that city they established 
their first house in England. 

Anthony Wood, in his treatise on the city of Oxford, 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 123 

quotes from a MS. of Trivettus, an historian of the 
reign of Edward in., giving this translation : " This 
year (to wit, 1221) the Preaching Fryers were sent 
into England. Who being in number thirteen, and 
having for their priour Brother Gilbert de Fraxineto, 
accompanied with the venerable Father Peter de 
Rupibus, Bishop of Wynton, came to Canterbury. 
Who when they had presented themselves to Stephen 
(Langton), archbishop thereof, and (he) hearing that 
they were Preaching Fryers, commanded Brother 
Gilbert that he should make a sermon before him in 
the church, in which he himself (as it should seem) 
had purposed to preach the same day. With whose 
words the archbishop was soe out of measure aedified, 
that all his time afterward he with great love and 
favour advanced the religion of these brethren. But 
they, going forward, went from Canterbury to London, 
where they arrived on the feast of St. Laurence. 
And going beyond, they came to Oxon on the feast of 
the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (15 Aug.), to 
whose honor they there built an oratory and had 
scholes, which are now called St. Edward's, in whose 
parish they received an habitation in which they 
continued for some time. But when there was noe 
opportunity of enlarging the place, they translated 
themselves to another place granted to them by the 
king, where now they inhabit without the walls/' 

According to Wood's narrative, the friars when they 
approached Oxford prayed to God, with hands lifted 
up to heaven, that, as they had hitherto been kindly 
received by all, they might meet with courtesy from 
the students. " At their entrance they applyed them- 
selves to the grandies of the Universitie, and at length 



124 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

to the canons of S. Frideswyde's, those of Osney, and 
to the chief burgesses of the towne. With the former 
they obtained respect by reason of their learned parts 
in philosophy and divinity ; with the said canons and 
burgesses love and tendernesse, because of their simple 
and saint-like carriage. 'At length diving into the 
favour of all persons in these parts, they obtained a 
seat in the priory, to the end that by their exemplary 
carriage and gifts of preaching the Jewes of Oxford 
might be converted to the Christian faith." The first 
of their many benefactors was Isabell de Bulbeck, the 
wife of Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford, who purchased a 
plot of ground and gave freely of her money that 
more land might be obtained, " whereon a mansion 
for them might be built." 

The famous Robert Grosseteste, probably chancellor 
of the university at this time, was one of the first to 
welcome the friars, and it is not unlikely that they 
went to Oxford at his invitation. Three of his friends 
joined the Order, and of one of them, John de St. 
Giles, the story is told that, preaching on poverty, he 
determined to show his sincerity. He accordingly 
descended from the pulpit, assumed the Dominican 
dress, and returned to finish the sermon. 

The settlement of the Dominicans may be further 
illustrated by the instance of Cologne. Jordan of 
Saxony and Henry of Cologne, in 1221, opened a 
hospitium near the stately cathedral, and officiated in 
a little chapel dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. The 
chapel was soon filled, and though the archbishop was 
asked by the local clergy to remove the friars, they 
remained to enlighten the people and rouse the priests 
to duty. The Dominican school of Cologne was to 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 125 

become famous, numbering among its teachers Albertus 
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. 

Before the organisation of the English mission the 
Dominicans had settled in Paris. Little, however, is 
known of this foundation. As early as 1217, at a 
meeting at Prouille, seven friars were commissioned to 
set out for Paris, which, famous for its university, was 
suited as a residence and training school for men 
desiring to be learned students and accomplished 
preachers. One of the seven was Laurence, an English- 
man, who, discoursing on his heavenly visions, cheered 
his companions during their march to Paris; and on 
their arrival in the city, where grave difficulties were 
encountered, Matthew, a Frenchman, was leader, and 
he alone knew the city and the university. After ten 
months, during which the Brothers occupied a small 
house near the bishop's palace, they were befriended 
by an Englishman, the Dean of St. Quentin. With 
the consent of his colleagues he bestowed on the 
friars, whose piety, humility, and eloquence he admired, 
the hospital erected for pilgrims, on Mount St. 
Genevieve, by John of St. Alban. They also received 
the adjoining chapel, dedicated to St. James; and these 
two buildings formed the Convent of St. James, the 
first of the Order in Paris. Here Albertus Magnus 
wrote his commentary on the Sentences, and Thomas 
Aquinas his Summa. 

In September 1224, according to Thomas of Eccleston, 
a band of Franciscans arrived at Dover. They were 
poor, and provision for their journey across the 
channel had been made by the monks of Fecamp. Of 
this band, numbering nine persons, with four clerics 
among them, the leader was Agnellus, an Italian, whom 



126 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Francis himself had designated minister of the province 
of England. The other three clerics were Englishmen, 
of whom one, Richard of Ingworth, was a priest. 
Among the laymen was Laurence of Beauvais, to whom 
Francis on his deathbed had given his habit, as a 
token of his affection. From Dover these men pro- 
ceeded to Canterbury, where they were entertained for 
two days in the priory of the Holy Trinity, and then 
were divided. Four went to London, while the others 
continued in Canterbury, being lodged in the hospital 
of the priests till a little chamber was given them 
"in the house of the scholars, commonly called the 
school-house." One may read how they boiled their 
porridge, and mixed their beer, which was thick and 
sour, with water, that it might go further; and how 
they were merry in spite of poverty. Their ignorance 
of English kept them at first from work. One of 
them, however, was an Englishman, and though him- 
self too young to preach, he helped the others in their 
studies, and all were ready in a short time to engage 
in the mission. 

By their sincerity and cheerfulness they won their 
way in Canterbury, and a house was built. This they 
would not accept, but borrowed it from the city 
corporation, in whom it was vested for their use. 

The four men who had gone to London had been re- 
ceived by the Dominicans, already settled in the city. 
They spent a fortnight with these Friars Preachers, 
after which, hiring a piece of ground in Cornhill, they 
erected rude huts suitable to their profession, and lived 
in the humblest fashion and on the meanest fare. In 
the following year they were offered a large building 
in the parish of St. Nicholas, which they accepted for 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 127 

their use only when it had been made over to the 
Corporation of London. The rule of poverty was 
respected in these early days. 

In the autumn of the year of their landing in Eng- 
land, or in 1225, as another account has it, Richard of 
Ingworth and Richard of Devon, leaving their com- 
panions in London, set out for Oxford. Legend has 
glorified their journey by telling how signs were given 
that heaven was guarding them. As they approached 
the university city, they found themselves in a large 
wood, and as it was nightfall and they feared the 
wild beasts, they sought a shelter with the monks of 
Abingdon. The prior, thinking they were jesters and 
not servants of God, would not receive them ; but a 
young monk, when his brothers had retired, showed 
them a hayloft, giving them bread and beer. The 
same night the monk dreamed that his brethren stood 
before the judgment-seat of Christ, and "there came 
a certain poor man, humble and despised, in the habit 
of these poor friars, and he cried with a loud voice : 
c O most impartial Judge, the blood of my brethren, 
which hath been shed this night, crieth unto Thee. 
The guardians of this place have refused them meat 
and lodging, although they have left all for Thy sake, 
and were now coming here to seek those souls which 
Thou hast redeemed with Thy blood ; they would not, 
in fact, have refused so much to jesters and mummers/ 
. . . Then the Judge commanded them to be hanged on 
the elm that stood in that cloister." In the morning 
the dreamer awoke to find the monks dead, and shortly 
afterwards he joined the Minorites. 

The two Franciscans, of whom this legend is related, 
reached Oxford, where they met with a reception from 



128 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

the Dominicans very different from that given by the 
monks of Abingdon. After a week spent with their 
entertainers they obtained a house in the parish of St. 
Ebbe, where they began to lecture and to preach, and 
where they were joined by " many honest bachelors and 
many notable men." Increasing rapidly, they required 
another house ; and shortly after one had been obtained, 
the owner " conferred the land and house on the com- 
munitv of the town for the use of the Friars Minors." 

m 

The house was not a palace, since the infirmary was 
" so low that the height of the walls did not much 
exceed the height of a man." When the time came to 
build a church the friars worked with their own hands, 
and were assisted by a bishop and an abbot, who did 
now, " soe zealous was their devotion for the promotion 
of this sect, carry upon their shoulders the coule and 
the hod, the one containing water, the other stones 
and mortar for the spedier finishing of this structure." 

A school was also established. The record is : " As 
Oxford was the principal place of study in England, 
where the whole body of scholars was wont to con- 
gregate, Francis Agnellus caused a school of sufficiently 
decent appearance to be built on the site on which the 
friars had settled, and induced Robert Grosseteste, of 
holy memory, to lecture to them there ; and under him 
they made extraordinary progress in sermons as well 
as in subtle moral themes suitable for preaching." 

Grosseteste, writing somewhere about 1238 to Gregory 
ix., bore this favourable testimony to the work of the 
friars : " Your Holiness may be assured that in England 
inestimable benefits have been produced by the friars ; 
for they illuminate the whole country with the light 
of their preaching and learning. Their holy conversa- 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 129 

tion excites vehemently to contempt of the world and 
to voluntary poverty, to the practice of humility in 
the highest ranks, to obedience to the prelates and 
head of the Church, to patience in tribulation, abstin- 
ence in plenty, and, in a word, to the exercise of all 
virtues. If your Holiness could see with what devotion 
and humility the people run to hear the word of life 
from them, for confession and instruction in daily life, 
and how much improvement the clergy and the regulars 
have obtained by imitating them, you would indeed 
say that 'upon them that dwell in the shadow of 
death hath the light shined/ " 

Grosseteste, who did not enter either of the Orders, 
was friendly to both. His strongest sympathies, how- 
ever, were with the Franciscans. He was the first 
reader in their school; and while he endeavoured to 
lead them in the path of learning, he insisted they 
should be zealous in good works, as Francis had given 
example. 

These friars, who made the name of Francis known 
in England, were not morose while obeying their Rule ; 
and in their first years at least, no scandal soiled their 
fame. According to Eccleston, " the brethren were so 
full of fun among themselves, that a mute could hardly 
refrain from laughter at the sight. So when the young 
friars of Oxford laughed too frequently, it was en- 
joined on one that as often as he laughed he should 
be punished. Now it happened that, when he had 
received no punishment in one day and yet could not 
restrain himself from laughing, he had a vision one 
night that the whole convent stood as usual in the 
choir, and the friars were beginning to laugh as usual, 
and behold the crucifix which stood at the door of the 



i 3 o FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

choir turned towards them as though alive, and said : 
' They are the sons of Corah, who in the hour of 
chanting laugh and sleep.' . . . On hearing this dream 
the friars were frightened, and behaved without any- 
noticeable laughter." 

Before the close of the century the Oxford Fran- 
ciscans were reported to be the most learned body of 
men in Christendom. Their fame attracted students 
from Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, 
and Portugal ; and from time to time they despatched 
teachers to the leading Franciscan schools in Europe. 

From Oxford a mission was sent to Cambridge, where 
the first convent was a disused synagogue situated 
near the common prison. A larger building was soon 
required, and one was erected on ground purchased for 
ten marks granted from the royal exchequer. The 
chapel was "one that a carpenter could build in a 
day's time." 

Five years after their landing the Franciscans had 
houses in the chief towns of England, and within a 
generation these houses numbered forty-nine. 

Francis himself, according to the Speculum Vitce, had 
shown what manner of houses he desired, and the 
wishes of the saint were not forgotten by those who 
first bore his name. " St. Francis said to Bonaventura, 
who had given the friars a farm to build a convent 
near Siena, ' Shall I tell you how the settlements of 
the friars ought to be built ? When the brethren go 
to any city where they have no place, and find some 
one who is ready to give them so much land as is 
sufficient for a building, a garden, and the like, they 
must, above all things, be cautious not to grasp at 
more than is necessary, always having regard to holy 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 131 

poverty, and that good example which they are bound 
to exhibit on all occasions. When they have a com- 
petent piece of ground, . . . and having obtained the 
bishop's blessing, they shall go and make a deep ditch 
all round the land on which they propose to build, 
and a good fence instead of a wall, as an emblem of 
their poverty. Then they shall build poor cottages of 
mud and wood, and some few cells for the friars to 
pray in and labour in for the eschewing of idleness. 
They shall have small churches and not large ones, 
either for preaching or on any other pretence. And if 
ever prelates or clerks, or religious or secular men, visit 
the brethren, their poor houses, cells, and churches 
shall prove to them the best sermons, and they shall 
be more edified by these things than by words." The 
Franciscans of Paris, it is told, built a magnificent hall, 
but Brother Agnellus prayed that it might be destroyed, 
and it immediately fell. 

The first Franciscan house in Rome was established 
in 1229, in the hospital of St. Blasio ; and subsequently 
Innocent iv., having evicted the Benedictines from the 
Convent of St. Maria in Ara Coeli, bestowed it on the 
Minorites. Gregorovius, the historian of Rome, has 
shown us these friars : " Wearing the brown cowl, and 
with the white cord around their bodies, triumphant 
mendicant brothers entered the ancient capital, and 
from the legendary palace of Octavian, on the summit 
of the Tarpeian fortress, a barefooted ( general ' of 
mendicants issued commands to subject 'provinces,' 
which, as in the time of the ancient Romans, stretched 
from distant Britain to the seas of Asia." 

The mendicants, largely through their zeal and 
partly through their privileges, outstripped all other 



\ 

132 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

religious societies in the Church. Among these privi- 
leges was the right to take into their ranks members 
of any Brotherhood, while no friar could be withdrawn 
from his own Order. Their advancement in the four- 
teenth century is illustrated by the story that the 
students of Oxford were reduced from thirty thousand 
to six thousand. Men decided that their sons should 
not pass within the walls of the university lest they 
should become friars. These figures are exaggerated, 
and the Black Death and other causes helped the dim- 
inution of the students. None the less, the enthus- 
iasm for success led the mendicants to unjust deeds, if 
we believe the charge of the Archbishop of Armagh. 

In 1357 he appeared before the papal Court at 
Avignon with this declaration : " Enticed by the 
wiles of the friars and by little presents, these boys 
(for the friars cannot circumvent men of mature age) 
enter the Orders, nor are they afterwards allowed, 
according to report, to get their liberty by leaving the 
Order, but they are kept with them against their will 
until they make profession ; further, they are not per- 
mitted, as it is said, to speak with their father or 
mother, except under the supervision and fear of a 
friar ; an instance came to my knowledge this very 
day; as I came out of my inn an honest man from 
England, who has come to this Court to obtain a 
remedy, told me that immediately after last Easter, 
the friars at the university of Oxford abducted in this 
manner his son, who was not yet thirteen years old, 
and when he went there, he could not speak with him 
except under the supervision of a friar." 

The popes, as a rule, would listen to no condemnation 
of the men who were in a special way their servants, 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 133 

and the accusations of the archbishop led to no remedy. 
The university of Oxford, however, passed a statute 
which, while attesting the zeal of the mendicants, pro- 
nounced it injurious to the prosperity of the univer- 
sity. The statute runs : " It is generally reported 
and proved by experience, that the nobles of this 
realm, those of good birth, and very many of the 
common people, are afraid, and therefore cease, to send 
their sons or relatives or others dear to them in tender 
youth, when they would make most advance in prim- 
itive sciences, to the university to be instructed, lest 
any friars of the Order of mendicants should entice 
or induce such children, before they have reached 
years of discretion, to enter the Order of the same 
mendicants ; and because owing to the admission of 
such boys to the mendicant Orders, the tranquillity 
of the students of the university has been often dis- 
turbed ; therefore the said university, zealous in the 
bowels of piety both for the number of her sons and 
the quiet of her students, has ordained and decreed, 
that if any of the Order of mendicants shall receive 
to their habit in this university, or induce, or cause 
to be received or induced, any such youth before the 
completion of his eighteenth year at least, or shall 
send such an one away from the university or cause 
him to be sent away, in order that he may be received 
into the same Order elsewhere : then eo ipso no one 
of the cloister or community of such a friar . . . being 
a graduate, shall during the year immediately fol- 
lowing, read or attend lectures in this university or 
elsewhere, where such exercises would count as dis- 
charge of the statutable requirements in this univer- 
sity ; and this penalty shall be inflicted on all those 



134 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of the Order of mendicants, and the associates of 
all those, who shall be convicted by credible persons 
of having withdrawn youths in any way from the 
university, or from learning philosophy." 

The mendicants were able to induce the king in 
parliament to annul this statute, under certain con- 
ditions, and once more they triumphed. 

The opposition which they excited may have been 
due to the rivalry of the secular clergy, who were 
powerful in the university ; but that opposition serves 
to illustrate the reception which mendicant enthusiasm 
provoked among the members of existing institutions. 

Wiclif has been credited with continuing the opposi- 
tion of the archbishop. It was not, however, till 1381 
that he came into conflict with the friars in regard 
to transubstantiation. Yet in spite of quarrels he 
was not unjust to their reputation when he pro- 
phesied : " I anticipate that some of the friars whom 
God shall be pleased to enlighten will return with 
all devotion to the original religion of Christ, will 
lay aside their unfaithfulness, and with the consent 
of Antichrist, offered or solicited, will freely return 
to primitive truth, and then build up the Church, 
as Paul did before them." 

The progress of the two great Orders was extra- 
ordinary, exciting the jealousy of rivals, and fostering 
their own pride. In the thirteenth century, when 
there were multitudes of conversions, the kingdom 
of God seemed to be coming with observation. 

In 1825, at the close of six hundred years of history, 
the Dominicans counted among their numbers four 
popes, seventy cardinals, four hundred and sixty 
bishops, four presidents of General Councils, twenty- 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 135 

five legates a latere, eighty' apostolic nuncios, and 
one prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. They 
claimed, too, four thousand writers of distinction, 
though they placed many inglorious names on this 
roll of fame. They were able to point to men of 
illustrious reputation, like Thomas Aquinas ; and with 
no small satisfaction numbered Antoninus, the first to 
write a complete history of the world ; and Jacobus de 
Voragine, whose Golden Legend has been translated 
into all the languages of the West. Among artists 
the brilliant names of Fra Bartolomeo and Fra Angelico 
have been associated with the Order. In 1243, within 
a generation after the passing of Dominic, one of the 
Friars -Preachers, Hugh of Vienne, was created a 
cardinal ; and another, Peter of Tarentaise, in 1276, 
ascended the papal throne as Innocent v. 

The Minorites relate that in 1381 they had fifteen 
hundred houses, though another account has it that, 
in 1264, there were eight thousand cloisters with two 
hundred thousand friars. In their catalogue of distin- 
guished men are five popes, fifty cardinals, and a host 
of minor prelates. The year 1289 saw in Nicholas IV. 
the Franciscan as pope. 

These ecclesiastical distinctions, while they appear 
inappropriate to mendicants, indicate the vast influence 
exercised by the friars of Dominic and Francis. 

Apart from their exposition of the dogma when they 
were found among the schoolmen, and their protection 
of it when they acted as inquisitors, the Dominicans 
earned and retained the reputation of cultured 
preachers, and crowded the churches with hearers. 
Legend played about the mission of John of Vicenza, 
hiding him in signs and wonders ; but no miracle 



136 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

save the love of Christ inspired the lips of Savonarola, 
who, in the closing years of the fifteenth century, 
preached the gospel of repentance in Florence, gaining 
distinction with persecution for himself, and enhancing 
the fame of his Order. 

The Minorite preacher, who for a time kept the 
Florentines away from Savonarola, is not the type 
of the true friars of Francis, who found their mission 
not among the rich and noble, but among the un- 
lettered and the poor. Shakespere shows us two 
friars in Romeo and Juliet While the scene is 
Italian, it is probable that use is made of the repu- 
tation of the English Minorites. Friar John calls 
out, " Holy Franciscan friar ! brother ! ho ! " and thus 
answers Friar Laurence — 

" Going to find a bare-foot brother out, 

One of our Order, to associate me, 

Here in this city visiting the sick, 

And finding him, the searchers of the town, 

Suspecting that we both were in a house 

Where the infectious pestilence did reign, 

Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth." 

Centuries after the foundation of the Orders, Lord 
Bacon wrote : " There is in man's nature a secret in- 
clination and motion towards love of others, which, 
if it be not spent upon some one, or a few, doth 
naturally spread it self e towards many ; and maketh 
man become humane and charitable; as it is seene 
sometime in friars." 

Professor Brewer, the editor of Monumenta Fran- 
ciscana, has pointed out the influence exercised by 
the Franciscans over the poorer classes of the medieval 
towns, and has attempted to prove from the localities 



PROGRESS OF THE ORDERS 137 

of their convents in England that it was their pur- 
pose to labour among the humblest people. In these 
towns there were masses of the unenfranchised, with 
no part in municipal life ; and the trade guilds were 
close corporations, to which entrance was difficult. 
The tyranny of feudalism drove the impatient from 
the rural districts to increase the poverty and dis- 
content of the cities, where the struggle for life, 
the meagre rewards of labour, the pride of the rich, 
made the poor the open enemies of the civil and 
ecclesiastical rulers, and caused them to be ever ready 
for religious and political change. "The sediment 
of the town population in the Middle Ages," says a 
modern writer, "was a dense slough of stagnant 
misery, squalor, famine, loathsome disease, and dull 
despair, such as the worst slums of London, Paris, 
or Liverpool know nothing of." 

The same writer. Dr. Jessop, in The Coming of the 
Friars, gives a vivid description of the Franciscans 
in England. "Outside the city walls," he says, "at 
Lynn and York and Bristol; in a filthy swamp at 
Norwich, through which the drainage of the city 
sluggishly trickled into the river, never a foot lower 
than its banks; in a mere barn-like structure, with 
walls of mud, at Shrewsbury ; in the ' stinking alley ' 
in London, the Minorites took up their abode, and 
there they lived on charity, doing for the lowest the 
most menial offices, speaking to the poorest the words 
of hope, preaching to learned and simple such sermons 
— short, homely, fervent, and emotional — as the world 
had not heard for many a day." This description, 
founded on facts set forth in the Monumenta Fran- 
ciscana, makes, indeed, for the conclusion that the 



138 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Franciscan mission was primarily intended for the 
outcasts and the poor. For these unfortunate men 
there was practically, in the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, no religious provision; and it is therefore 
intelligible why, in France and Italy especially, where 
the Church was richest and most powerful, heresy 
flourished and was the sign o£ priestly neglect. The 
churches were indeed open to all, but they were not 
placed where the poor herded ; and between the 
worldly ecclesiastics and the dwellers in the slums 
there was a violent social contrast, and neither 
courtesy nor sympathy. To the destitute the friars 
of St. Francis went with the gospel of Christ, and, 
as not seldom they had renounced wealth and rank, 
their sincerity was respected. They had indeed 
houses as soon as they settled in a town, but luxury 
was unknown and comfort there was none. Their 
fare was scanty, their dress that of paupers. Many 
were not priests, and none were worldly ecclesiastics. 
And so they found their way to the weary and heavy 
laden, and were welcomed. They preached the gospel 
to the poor, in the name of the Son of Man, who 
had not where to lay His head; and they told the 
tale of Mary, tender and compassionate. They were 
bearers, indeed, of glad tidings, of the love of God, the 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the pity of the Virgin ; 
and they who received them learned that though 
despised on earth they were remembered in heaven. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Mendicants and the Inquisition 

Innocent hi., Gibbon says, "may boast of the two 
most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the 
establishment of transubstantiation and the origin of 
the Inquisition." The great pope, through whom the 
papacy reached its height of political grandeur, opposed 
arms to heresy when worldly policies had destroyed, 
and priestly threatenings had failed to restore, the 
unity of the Church. There was an inquisition, indeed, 
among the Cathari, which preceded the crusade, but 
wanting organisation it proved ineffective. The crusade 
itself secured victims by the thousand, and yet when 
the tale of blood was told, the progress of heresy had 
still to be checked. Dominic worked in Languedoc, 
and many have styled him the founder of the Inquisi- 
tion; yet it was not formally established till years 
had passed after his death. His purpose, to raise up 
learned expounders of the dogma, was realised through 
his own enthusiasm and devotion to the Church. When, 
however, the fervour he inspired had been chilled, and 
meaner concerns interested and occupied the friars, it 
was natural that these men with intellectual traditions 
should be ready for service when Rome determined to 
organise a magistracy for examining the faith of indi- 
viduals and assigning punishments. Right reason de- 

139 



140 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

manded that the dogma, judged by believers to be the 
truth of God, should be expounded and defended by 
trained men ; and an expectation was formed that this 
truth would secure a signal success, if only its divine 
character could be demonstrated. Dominic's scheme, 
certainly no worthless one, was meant to secure the 
victory of truth over error by lawful spiritual and 
ecclesiastical means ; but it was violated when the 
Inquisition crushed heretics and schismatics, and free- 
dom was opposed by crass authority. 

The radiant love of Francis, which glowed on all God's 
creation, had nothing akin to that stern spirit which 
filled the men who touched the cruel work of the 
Inquisition; and yet there were Franciscans who 
became papal extirpators of heresy. 

The crusade, as a religious war, failed in Languedoc, 
and under the leadership of Simon de Montfort passed 
into a territorial campaign, by which he enriched his 
family and ultimately increased the domain of France. 
Heresy was not vanquished ; and Rome, not content to 
be less than victor, gradually built up the Inquisition, 
with defined powers and regular officers, to be an engine 
for destroying the enemies of the Church in France 
and throughout Christendom. 

The history of the Inquisition, whatever the motives 
of churchmen may have been, reveals a long and varied 
series of crimes against humanity. The number of the 
victims of the Holy Office in any country cannot be 
given, since accounts were not always kept, and some of 
the actual records were destroyed in the fury of revolu- 
tions. Llorente, in his history of the Inquisition, asserts 
that in Spain alone thirty-one thousand persons were 
burnt, and two hundred and ninety thousand otherwise 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 141 

punished. These figures have been examined by Prescott 
and discounted by Hef ele ; but no partisan, by reducing 
statistics, has been able to remove the disgrace of the 
Spanish Inquisition. 

Significant is the fact chronicled by Motley : " Upon 
the 16th of February 1568 a sentence of the Holy Office 
condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to 
death as heretics. A proclamation of the king, dated ten 
years later, confirmed this decree of the Inquisition and 
ordered it to be carried into instant execution. . . . 
Three millions of people, men, women, and children, 
were sentenced to the scaffold in three lines." With 
the Holy Office, as a spiritual or ecclesiastical Court, 
the mendicants, and especially the Dominicans, were 
associated ; and the praise or blame for its deeds was 
theirs, even while the ultimate responsibility rested 
with the Church. 

Before the thirteenth century, by an arrangement 
based on the Theodosian Code, the duty of securing 
purity of belief was assigned to the bishop, who was 
the accuser, and the civil magistrate, who was the 
judge. The mendicants, however, acquired the right 
to seek out and to punish heretics. Probably the 
machinations of Frederick 11. influenced the popes to 
take into their own hands the treatment of their 
religious enemies, many of whom had avowed them- 
selves imperialists. 

The relation of the civil magistrate to religion, the 
connection of Church and State, are questions variously 
answered and provocative of prejudice and passion. 
Rome demanded submission from governments; but 
in sending out inquisitors it weakened its connection 
with various States, and there were countries with 



142 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

courage and strength to preserve their citizens from 
the hands of the officials of religion. It was by no 
violent assertion of prerogative that Innocent in. called 
upon Raymond of Toulouse to crush the Albigenses, 
nor, on the other hand, did Frederick II. usurp a right 
when, to preserve the favour of the Church, he enacted 
stern laws for the suppression of heretics ; but when 
one pope after another sent the mendicants to exercise 
functions which had belonged to civil magistrates, and 
to treat useful and well-behaved citizens with barbaric 
cruelty, the union of the Church with certain States 
was weakened, and kings learned that their obedience 
to the Bishop of Rome had defined limits. Philip the 
Fair, to take one example, opposed the Dominican 
inquisitors of Toulouse, when he was in open quarrel 
with Rome, and released many of their prisoners. The 
kings of England, with the pride and power of their 
country, did not submit the liberties of their subjects 
to the tyranny of a foreign and secret tribunal. 

The usurpation by clerics of functions long exercised 
by civil magistrates, and the disputes regarding the 
nature of the cases falling under the jurisdiction of 
the civil and ecclesiastical courts, caused disturbances 
not easily settled. They had, moreover, far-reaching 
effects, and may be taken as factors in the secularisa- 
tion of politics, as Lecky styles it, which is character- 
istic of the life of the modern world. 

The bishops of the Church having failed to preserve 
doctrinal purity, even in Rome, might have been ex- 
pected to welcome the mendicants as inquisitors, especi- 
ally the Preachers, with their training in theology ; but 
a long and bitter strife began when a Dominican re- 
ceived a commission to examine a case of heresy. 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 143 

The friars, having no monastic duties and no paro- 
chial attachments, were free to be the servants of the 
Church; and scholarship was at first an excellent 
preparation for the service to which they were called. 
The leading heretics were not foolish and unlettered 
men seeking for novelties in religion and dominated 
by rash enthusiasm. Some were intelligent critics of 
theological pretensions and skilled opponents of certain 
doctrines set forth as truths of God, even though their 
own systems of thought were at fault. The ordinary 
bishop or priest, with no speculative interests and no 
scientific education, was singularly unfitted to deal 
with intellectual foes. He did not, as a rule, object 
to cruel methods, and did not reckon argument his 
only weapon with which to meet an enemy. He might 
therefore have welcomed the aid of trained men, had 
not his own province been invaded and his privileges 
reduced. He accordingly opposed the functionaries, 
while approving the establishment of the Inquisition. 

The Dominicans were the first papal servants, after 
the termination of the crusade, to receive a command 
to labour among the Albigenses. It is to the year 
1227, however, that the Inquisition may be assigned, 
though some have associated its foundation with the 
injunctions of the fourth Lateran Council to bishops 
to search for and punish heretics. ' In that year atten- 
tion was called to Filippo Paternon, a prelate in whose 
diocese, extending from Pisa to Arezzo, Catharism had 
progressed, and from which it had passed to Florence. 
In its early stage, in the year 1226, the case had been 
tried before the Bishop of Florence and a magistrate. 
Paternon, pleading guilty, was released without punish- 
ment ; but as he continued in his old ways, Gregory ix. 



144 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

appointed a commission to examine the charges brought 
against him, and gave the chief place in it to a 
Dominican, Fra Giovanni di Salerno. The canons 
fixed by the Lateran Council for settling the troubles 
in Languedoc were to regulate the conduct of this 
case. Fra Giovanni died in 1230, but a successor was 
appointed and the work continued. It is this com- 
mission which may be reckoned the formal beginning 
of the Inquisition, seeing that its members were named 
and its powers defined. 

The work of Fra Giovanni and his successor satisfied 
Rome, and in 1233 Gregory ix. issued two bulls, which 
have sometimes been taken as the foundation of the 
Inquisition. A Council of Toulouse, 1229, had enacted, 
in conformity with the injunctions of the Lateran Coun- 
cil, that each city should establish a board of inquisition, 
composed of one cleric and three laymen. This arrange- 
ment, however, was set aside by the new decrees. 

The first of these decrees, addressed to bishops, con- 
tained the words : " We, seeing you engrossed in the 
whirlwind of cares, and scarce able to breathe in the 
pressure of overwhelming anxieties, think it well to 
divide your burdens, that they may be more easily 
borne. We have therefore determined to send preach- 
ing friars against the heretics of France and the 
adjoining provinces, and we beg, warn, and exhort you, 
ordering you, as you reverence the Holy See, to receive 
them kindly, and to treat them well, giving them in 
this, as in all else, favour, counsel, and aid, that they 
may fulfil their office." The second bull, addressed to 
the " Priors and Friars of the Order of Preachers, 
Inquisitors," proceeded thus: "Therefore you, or any 
of you, wherever you may happen to preach, are em- 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 145 

powered, unless they desist from such defence (of 
heretics) on monition, to deprive clerks of their bene- 
fices forever, and to proceed against them and all 
others, without appeal, calling in the aid of the secular 
arm, if necessary, and coercing opposition, if requisite, 
with the censures of the Church, without appeal." 
Gregory did not see the consequences of his act when 
he bestowed such extraordinary power ; and, at a later 
time, to limit the number with this authority, was 
compelled to instruct the provincials of the Order to 
select specially qualified men. 

It was deemed a wise and merciful arrangement 
that bishops or priests should not preside over the 
newly constituted tribunals, as they might act with 
malice against private enemies, involving the innocent 
with the guilty. The mendicants, on the other hand, 
with no local connections where they laboured, might 
be expected to do justly, and to be above suspicion of 
avarice. And it is worthy of note that at the founda- 
tion of the Inquisition they were at their full height 
of popularity, honoured as good and faithful servants 
of religion. 

In Languedoc, however, some of these friars laboured 
in a fashion which stirred hatred and fury, and in 
that place was begun the unholy reputation of the 
Inquisition. The traditions of the crusade and the 
religious character of the people stimulated the friars 
to a rigour which was cruelty, and a zeal which was 
brutality. Legal methods, even the crudities of medieval 
times, were abandoned. False witnesses were heard; 
or at anyrate, the evidence of criminals was accepted. 
The accused were entrapped by insidious questions, and 
advocates were refused for their defence. In many 
10 



146 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

places there were riots, and, though in 1237 the pope 
associated the milder Franciscans with the Dominicans, 
the tumult continued, till for a time the Inquisition was 
suspended. Another interest attaches to this raid on 
unbelief. In Languedoc the inquisitors began the 
regular use of the punishment of burning, which the 
Church has made its own, improperly interpreting the 
words: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth 
as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, 
and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." 
This punishment was not new, being known from the 
period of the Council of Chalcedon, but it had been 
rarely employed. 

At the publication of the bulls of 1233 it was not 
the intention of the pope to interfere with the 
bishops, and at first there was no serious friction. In 
that year certain rules were approved by Rome, con- 
taining provision that in every diocese the bishops 
should act in name of the Church. In 1234 the Arch- 
bishop of Sens remonstrated against the invasion of 
the friars as inquisitors into his territory, and Gregory 
IX., revoking all commissions, simply advised the pre- 
late to make use of the Preachers. Further proof is 
not wanting that Rome had no intention of interfering 
with episcopal rights. Fra Ruggieri Calcagni, in 1243, 
described himself as "inquisitor Domini Papae in 
Tuscia," and elsewhere styled himself inquisitor of the 
pope and the bishop. In spite of papal prudence, how- 
ever, the Dominicans were to come into collision with 
the prelates, wresting from them and from the Francis- 
cans the supreme control of the Inquisition. 

It is not strange, from the aggressive orthodoxy and 
ecclesiastical zeal of Dominic, that his friars should 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 147 

have become inquisitors ; but it is surprising that 
followers of Francis should have engaged in the work 
of crushing heretics. They may have been moved by 
jealousy, grudging distinction to their rivals. In any 
case, they acted as inquisitors ; and to them were 
entrusted parts of France and Italy, and, later, 
Bohemia and Dalmatia. In 1254, by the special 
arrangement of Innocent IV., the care of Italy was 
divided between the two Orders, and to the Franciscans 
were assigned the central and southern districts. 
Occasionally the Orders were associated, as in Aragon, 
where the two provincials were appointed the chief 
inquisitors of the kingdom, but this association 
nowhere conduced to peace. It was inevitable that 
offences should come, when servants of Eome were 
associated with men, such as the French prelates, who 
did not lightly yield to the pope. This association is 
illustrated from the Council of Narbonne, 1243 or 
1244, at which were representatives from the provinces 
of Narbonne, Aries, and Aix. 

The canons of this council were addressed to the 
Dominicans, and these words were written by the 
bishops : " We write this to you, not that we wish to 
bind you down by our advice, as it would not be fitting 
to limit the freedom accorded to your discretion by other 
forms and rules than those of the Holy See, to the pre- 
judice of the business ; but we wish to help your devo- 
tion, as we are commanded to do by the Holy See, since 
you, who bear our burdens, ought to be, through mutual 
charity, assisted with help and advice." Further, the 
inquisitors were to have the right to pass judgments 
and impose sentences ; and this significant declaration 
was made : " You are to abstain from these pecuniary 



148 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

penances and exactions, both for the sake of the 
honour of your Order and because you will have fully 
enough other work to which to attend." 

A provincial council could not bind the whole 
Church, and very soon, indeed, the canons were 
modified for use in the provinces represented in the 
Council of Narbonne. A step of extreme import- 
ance was taken when a body of bishops entrusted 
to the Dominicans definite powers of sentencing and 
punishing heretics. The command to men to abstain 
from imposing pecuniary penances, for the sake of the 
honour of their Order, implies a rapid decline of 
purity in the few years which had elapsed from the 
time when the Dominican chapter accepted the rule 
of poverty. In a provincial chapter, in 1242, it 
was decided that money should not be touched or 
pecuniary penances imposed. Yet temptation was 
ever strong, and in 1245 Innocent iv. was forced to 
ordain that the fines which were still continued should 
be expended on building prisons and supporting 
prisoners ; and, in 1251, the same pope had to take 
the extreme step of forbidding their exaction. The 
scandal, however, was not removed. Nicholas iv. gave 
to bishops and inquisitors together a power to 
nominate custodians and administrators of the money 
wrung from heretics. Finally, the mendicants 
triumphed when Benedict XL, in 1304, decreed that 
they were to be freed from episcopal interference and 
were to render their accounts directly to papal 
deputies. 

Money was now extorted in every conceivable way, 
and many were the scandals. Benedict himself 
addressed a warning to the inquisitors of Padua and 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 149 

Vicenza, from which complaints had been made to 
Kome; and in 1311, at the Council of Vienne, 
Clement v., after investigating charges against the 
Dominicans, put on record that he was convinced they 
were proven. A crisis was reached when Clement VI., 
in 1343, discovered that the inquisitors of Florence 
and Lucca were defrauding the papal Court of its legal 
share of fines. Avarice corrupted the mendicants, and 
throughout the history of the Inquisition their zeal for 
purity of doctrine was stimulated by love of money, 
which they had vowed not to touch. It is impossible 
to estimate, at any period, the wealth derived through 
the Inquisition, the sale of indulgences or benefac- 
tions ; but the dealings of the English Franciscans 
with Boniface viii. serve to show that the friars had 
money when occasion demanded. These Franciscans 
wished the pope to relax their Rule, so that they might 
hold lands, and to purchase this relaxation they 
deposited forty thousand ducats with certain bankers. 
Boniface showed that a pontiff was not above sharp 
practices. He pretended to consider the question, 
and then, refusing the relaxation, seized the ducats on 
the ground that the Franciscans had no right to possess 
money. The example of the founders of the Orders, 
the express directions of the Eules, and their vows, 
were alike powerless to overcome cupidity. 

The inquisitors had far-reaching powers to make 
them feared. They were authorised to deal directly 
with suspects, to summon any individual in a case ; 
and were required to answer, when their fame was 
highest, to the pope alone. The superiors of the 
Orders, after long years of conflict, ceased to have 
jurisdiction over the Brothers serving on the 



150 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Inquisition ; and when Boniface viii. decreed that they 
had a power of removal he was practically overruled, 
tenacious of purpose though he was, when the friars 
claimed that they must be tried and condemned, and 
not simply deposed. 

The Franciscan superiors endeavoured to preserve 
their authority by granting commissions for a definite 
number of years, but the Dominicans were persuaded 
that such commissions were useless for men who were 
to be papal servants. The inquisitors were ever in 
touch with Rome, and their peculiar services, especially 
the transmission of fines, secured powers which made 
them independent of all authority save that of the pope. 

To outward appearance the inquisitors were still 
humble friars, as they wore the recognised garments 
of their Orders, and professed to be poor. Yet their 
humility was false, and a layman would use the most 
extravagant phrases of courtesy, saying even : " Your 
Religious Majesty," and showing himself ever ready 
to flatter. They were not men to be loved, since 
tragedy so often went with them ; and the local clergy 
and priests, thinking of their own invaded rights, did 
nothing to help them to be respected. Heretics saw 
in them their judges and executioners, and pious 
Catholics, satisfied to be at peace with their neighbours, 
looked on them as destroyers of social order. Very 
early it was said of the Dominicans : " They have 
created a court of judgment, and whosoever attacks 
them they declare to be a Waldensian ; they seek to 
penetrate into the secrets of all men, so as to render 
themselves dreaded." 

The secular clergy had another grievance, apart 
from invaded rights. As preservers of the faith the 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 151 

inquisitors acted as ecclesiastical police, watching the 
local priests and reporting on their work to the 
bishops, who were required to act as ordered. The police 
work might have produced excellent results, as it was 
an episcopal service ; yet it simply created dispeace. 
Men, too, severed from the things of the world, might 
have been expected to direct prince and peasant alike. 
Had the Orders been wise spiritual Brotherhoods, they 
might have continued the missionary labours of the 
founders, and their fervour might have created some- 
thing at least of that enthusiasm for piety which 
crowned the efforts of Dominic and Francis. But 
when the friars, in the years of unimpassioned faith, 
were drawn from every class of society, without test 
of qualification for Christ-like service, there was no 
method of securing pious guides for the people. 
Undoubtedly, among the mendicants, even when 
spiritual degradation was the general mark, were to be 
found the best religious teachers and guides within the 
Church. Yet it must be asserted that, as a rule, the 
inquisitors used their powers not to assist individual 
souls in righteousness, but to spy into the ways 
of families, to fashion the conduct of men and 
women, so that the Church might be outwardly 
reverenced and themselves obeyed. This domestic 
superintendence made them detested among laymen, 
as they were hated by the priests, into whose ways 
they inquired. 

The thoroughness and extent of the work of the 
inquisitors may be discovered from the fact that in 
1245 and 1246 examinations were held in six hundred 
places in Languedoc ; and in a single locality, to take 
an example, four hundred and twenty cases were tried. 



152 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

In the Courts, in addition to heretics, magicians, 
sorcerers, and soothsayers were tried ; and the examina- 
tions and punishments were the same for the accused, 
whatever the charge preferred. The use of torture 
in criminal examinations was extended by Innocent IV. 
to heresy trials. In 1252 he enjoined civil magistrates 
in Lombardy and Tuscany to employ torture for ex- 
tracting from prisoners confessions of guilt and also 
information regarding their associates. 

Mosheim gives a vivid description of the application 
of torture. " The torture," he says, " was by the rope, 
by water, and by fire. The rope was passed under the 
arms, which were tied behind the back of the accused. 
By this rope he was drawn up into the air with a 
pulley, and there left to swing for a time, and then 
suddenly let fall to within half a foot of the ground, 
by the shock of which fall all his joints were 
dislocated. If he still confessed nothing, the torture 
by water was tried. After making him drink a great 
quantity of water he was laid upon a hollowed bench ; 
across the middle of this bench a stick of timber passed 
which kept the body of the offender suspended, and 
caused him most intense pain in the backbone. The 
most cruel torture was that by fire, in which his feet, 
being smeared with grease, etc., were directed towards 
a hot fire, and the soles of them left to burn till he 
would confess. Each of these tortures was continued 
as long as in the judgment of the physician of the 
Inquisition the man was able to endure them. He 
might now confess what he would, but still the torture 
would be repeated, first to discover the object and 
motive of the acknowledged offence, and then to make 
him expose his accomplices. If when tortured he 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 153 

confessed nothing, many snares were laid to elicit 
from him unconsciously his offence. The conclusion 
was that the accused, when he seemed to have satisfied 
the judges, was condemned according to the measure 
of his offence to death, or to perpetual imprisonment, 
or to the galleys, or to be scourged; and he was 
delivered over to the civil authorities, who were 
entreated to spare his life, as the Church never 
thirsted for blood ; but yet they would experience 
persecution if they did not carry the decisions of the 
Court into execution." 

By a strange pretence the cleric who did not plead 
for mercy for a prisoner became subject to ecclesiastical 
censure. The custom was of ancient origin, traceable 
to the time when it was not lawful for a Christian 
to be the direct or indirect cause of a man's death. 
The rule had to be relaxed for laymen, but was con- 
tinued for clerics, who delivered the accused to 
punishment, and went through the form of asking 
for mercy. Boniface vin. decided that bishops must 
give over culprits to the secular arm, knowing at 
the same time they would make appeals for pity which 
would be futile ; and, long afterwards, Innocent vin. 
excommunicated any magistrate who hindered the 
execution of a sentence for which a plea of mitigation 
of punishment had been tendered. 

There is a tradition that Dante on one occasion 
appeared before a tribunal of the Inquisition. The 
story, which is more than doubtful, is that the 
Franciscans, annoyed with what was said in the 
Commedia regarding the degeneracy of the Order, 
brought him to trial. He asked time to prepare a 
defence, and in a few hours presented the poem, 



154 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

" Dante's Confession of Faith." When it was read he 
was at once acquitted. The authorship of the poem, 
however, is as doubtful as the truth of the story. 

Wherever they appeared the inquisitors made papal 
authority paramount and the pope's name familiar; 
but they also made that authority irksome and that 
name greatly to be feared. The idea of Roman 
supremacy was intruded into family life. Hilde- 
brand, seeing spiritual independence violated by 
imperial hands, determined to obtain freedom ; and, in 
the strife with Henry, tasting the pleasure of political 
power, desired to secure lordship over all princes. 
Now, after Innocent III. had been lord-paramount of 
the West, his successors were sending their servants 
into every house ; and, making their power real, caused 
themselves to be feared, and not seldom detested, 
vice-gerents of God though they were styled. The 
mendicants, in their first years, carried glad tidings 
to multitudes, and reverence was paid to him who, 
professing to be Christ's vicar, was doing His work. 
In the years when their piety was corrupted they 
continued to declare the supremacy of the Bishop of 
Rome over all Christendom, over all princes and all 
prelates ; but they could not inspire respect for the 
man who claimed to be the representative of Christ. 
And when the Roman power was embodied in 
inquisitors, and the pope's messengers were spies and 
then judges, liberty was lost, family peace was ruined, 
and the name of the Bishop of Rome abhorred. 

Hated though they were, the inquisitors were eager 
for their tragic mission, careless of danger and ready 
for any death which could be hailed as martyrdom. 
Their papal commission did not protect them when 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 155 

men in their wrath rose up against them, heedless of 
the quarter from which they had come. And some- 
times this wrath was furious, meaning danger to the 
oppressors. As early as 1233 two Dominicans sent 
to search for heretics in Cordes were slain; and in 
Narbonne, in 1235, there was a rising in which the 
Dominicans were driven from the city and their 
convent sacked. 

A dramatic incident occurred in 1235, illustrating 
the fervour of the inquisitors and the obedience of the 
friars. Guillem Arnauld, in his pursuit of heretics, 
summoned twelve citizens of Toulouse to appear for 
examination regarding their faith. The men happened 
to be citizens of repute, and instead of obeying procured 
a magisterial order to the inquisitor to leave the city. 
Arnauld in turn would not depart, and was ejected. A 
violent quarrel ensued, but his purpose was not to be 
thwarted, and after some weeks he requested the 
Dominican prior of Toulouse to send messengers to 
intimate to the rebellious citizens that they must 
appear at Carcassonne. The prior did not hesitate, 
but, causing the convent bell to be tolled and the 
friars to be assembled, addressed them, saying: 
" Brethren, rejoice, for I must send four of you 
through martyrdom to the throne of the Most High. 
Such are the commands of our brother, Guillem the 
Inquisitor, and whosoever obeys them will be slain on 
the spot, as threatened by the consuls. Let those who 
are ready to die for Christ ask pardon." Every friar 
present threw himself on the ground to ask for pardon, 
and then rose, offering himself to death. In the sequel 
no one suffered injury. Arnauld, however, was reserved 
for a death which his friends counted martyrdom, and 



156 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

which might well be reckoned the just reward of 
incessant cruelty. He and zealots like him pursued 
their ways, as ready to die as to kill, and the guilt 
fastened to the slayer of a cleric alone restrained the 
hands of men constantly tempted to revenge. In 1242 
Arnauld, with certain companions, Dominicans and 
Franciscans among them, arrived at Avignonet, and 
entered a castle where they were to hold a Court. 
The chief man of the district, Raymond dAlfaro, the 
representative of Count Raymond, had his masters 
cause to avenge. He arranged a plot for the destruc- 
tion of the inquisitors, who one and all, when darkness 
had fallen, were slain in the hall of the castle. The 
mace of dAlfaro crushed the skull of Arnauld. 

The career of St. Peter Martyr shows the inquisitor 
in the unusual character of a saint. Piero da Verona, 
born at the beginning of the thirteenth century, was 
the son of a heretic. From his earliest years, the story 
runs, he showed extraordinary attachment to the 
orthodox creed, being moved by the Holy Ghost, and 
in 1221 he became a member of the Dominican Order. 
As a friar he was guiltless of sin, and also as an 
inquisitor, and in his conduct he exhibited all the 
virtues of the Christian life. Miracles were at his 
command to aid him in his w T ork of conversion. In 
1233 he became inquisitor in Milan, and no long 
time elapsed till his labours were crowned by the 
burning of several heretics. So unwearied was he in 
spiritual toil that his persecutions roused a tumult in 
Milan, in 1242, which was almost destructive of the 
city. From Milan he removed to Florence, where the 
Inquisition may be said to have been founded, and 
where the conspicuous effect was the increase of heresy. 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 157 

Piero was delegated to assist Fra Ruggieri, who, enthusi- 
astic though he was, was soon eclipsed by the stranger. 
Piero's preaching attracted crowds, and he was success- 
ful in organising a special guard of nobles for the 
protection of the inquisitors. The heretics, as oppon- 
ents of the Church, were under the care of the 
Emperor Frederick 11., and they also were organised. 
Armed bands were not wont to keep the peace. Two 
battles were fought in Florence, in both of which 
Piero as captain was victorious, and heresy and 
imperialism alike were for a time suppressed. 
Frederick 11. died in 1250, and in the following year 
the pope, rejoicing in the death of his great opponent, 
who for political ends protected the heretics, com- 
manded the Inquisition to increase its vigour. Orders 
were sent to Piero to proceed to Cremona, where, and 
afterwards at Milan, he laboured so unceasingly that 
a plot was organised for his murder. Assassins were 
hired, and on a day when he was journeying with a 
single companion he was set upon, and his head 
crushed with a blow. Piero was a martyr, and before 
a year was a canonised saint. Reverence for his 
memory did not die. In 1340 the body was translated 
to the Church of St. Eustorgius in Milan, where a 
magnificent tomb had been raised for its reception; 
and in 1586 Sixtus V. spoke of him as the second 
head of the Inquisition, and styled him its first 
martyr. Titian and Guido each selected the martyr- 
dom as a subject for his art. 

Conrad of Marburg, the confessor of St. Elizabeth, 
was a Dominican, according to certain writers, 
though the statement is doubtful. Whatever his 
ecclesiastical station may have been, he was pro- 



1 58 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

bably the most fanatical of all the inquisitors who 
employed wanton cruelty for the perfecting of the 
saints, such as Elizabeth of Hungary, and sheer 
brutality for purifying the Church from heretics. 
He attempted to establish the Inquisition in Germany, 
but the Germans, with love of freedom, would suffer 
no tribunal governed by Rome to be erected in their 
midst, and some of them, nobles they were, roused by 
his atrocities, murdered him as an oppressor. He 
thought like a madman, and acted as a fool, heedless 
of the warnings of the German prelates; and there 
were patriots to free their country from his unbridled 
fury. 

The Spanish Inquisition, forming one of the darkest 
chapters in the history of the Church, was entrusted 
to the Dominicans. Under the influence of Thomas de 
Torquemada, Queen Isabella applied to Sixtus iv. to 
establish the Inquisition in Castile. A papal bull of 
institution, published in 1478, decreed that the 
members of the tribunal should be chosen by the 
sovereigns, to whom all confiscated properties were 
to be given. In 1483 Torquemada himself was 
appointed chief inquisitor of Castile, and, a few years 
later, of Aragon. 

Every year, at the beginning of Lent, the clergy 
were required to rouse the people to give information 
against all persons suspected of heresy. Spies were 
employed; false witnesses found their vocation; 
torture was used to wring confessions. 

In 1481 the Spanish holocaust began when six 
victims perished at Seville, and before ten months 
had passed two hundred and twenty-eight persons 
were burnt in that city. In a few years the victims 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 159 

throughout the country numbered two thousand, 
while thousands of men, after fines, confiscation of 
property, loss of civil rights and even of personal 
liberty, were restored to the Church. The Jews, not 
an insignificant portion of the population, suffered 
terribly. Some of them had voluntarily accepted 
Christianity, and not a few had attained high position 
in the State. The Christianised Jews were the special 
objects of Torquemada's suspicion, and the men who 
remained true to their national faith were treated as 
dangerous enemies of the Cross. A general order was 
passed by the sovereigns, in 1492, that all Jews must 
be baptized or, if steadfast in their religion, quit the 
country. It has been reckoned that one hundred 
thousand Jews left Spain, while as many remained 
and were baptized. The unfortunate people suffered 
that the Christian Church might be purified in the 
eyes of Torquemada and his friars. 

A contemporary painting shows a procession of Jews 
and Jewesses to the stake, during the festivities in 
Madrid, in 1680, which attended the marriage of 
Charles II, One of the victims of 1680 was a beautiful 
Jewish girl, in her seventeenth year. Passing to the 
place of burning, she cried to the queen, who was a 
spectator : " Great queen, is not your presence able to 
bring me some comfort under my misery ? Consider 
my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion 
which I have sucked in with my mothers milk." 
The queen did not answer, turning away her eyes. 

The atrocities of Torquemada's rule increased, and 
Rome again and again interfered, though with partial 
effect. The Dominicans professed to be obedient 
servants, but they were not easily controlled. The 



160 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Inquisition continued as an ecclesiastical Court in 
Spain till the year 1813, when it was finally abolished. 
Long before that year, however, the tribunal had 
become harmless. 

In Spain there was a custom which illustrated the 
wanton cruelty tincturing the orthodox theology. 
The victim of the Holy Office was led to the flames, 
dressed in garments covered with representations of 
devils and scenes of torture, and these were intended 
to show what the Most High had prepared for the 
enemies of the faith. It was everywhere the same 
teaching, that the earthly was the prelude to the 
eternal punishment. " It is horrible," says Lecky, " it 
is appalling, to reflect what the mother, the wife, the 
sister, the daughter of the heretic must have suffered 
from this teaching. She saw the body of him who 
was dearer to her than life, dislocated and writhing and 
quivering with pain ; she watched the slow fire creep- 
ing from limb to limb till it had swallowed him in a 
sheet of agony, and when at last the scream of anguish 
had died away and the tortured body was at rest, 
she was told that all this was acceptable to the God 
she served, and was but a faint image of the sufferings 
He would inflict through eternity upon the dead." 

The Inquisition had most noted apologists, among 
whom was Thomas Aquinas; but it may be safely 
affirmed that Francis, if not Dominic, would have con- 
demned its practices. The association of the Minorites 
with persecution and cruelty was the sign of radical 
change in their ideal. Imitation of the life of Christ 
was for Francis the method of salvation, and in that 
imitation was the winning of sinners to holiness by 
the charm of love. He was content to be in the 



MENDICANTS AND THE INQUISITION 161 

Church, though alien to its paramount aims, so long 
as he enjoyed liberty for the labours which charity 
inspired. It is strange indeed that with his courage 
he did not assail Innocent ill. for the violence of the 
crusade, which the pope himself justified by the 
declaration : " He that taketh away the faith stealeth 
the life; for the just shall live by faith." Francis, 
however, was the director of a mission, not an accuser 
of dignitaries or a critic of papal plans. The secret 
of his power was charity, which could not contradict 
itself through the atrocities of an Inquisition. When, 
therefore, the Minorites engaged in cruelties, they 
showed themselves fallen away from the high purposes 
of their founder. 

The Dominicans, too, as the stern ministers of the 
Inquisition, forsook the aims of their saint. Dominic 
was concerned to have religion taught so that men 
might not be carried about with every wind of 
doctrine, and that wanderers might be brought back 
to recognised beliefs and established customs. The 
force he desired to employ was intellectual or spiritual. 
Persuasion rather than coercion was his method. 

There is a sense in which the persecution of heretics 
by the mendicants may be understood, though never 
justified. Their teaching in the days of their religious 
strength stimulated men to think, and to know them- 
selves as responsible beings. In the revival of thought, 
when spiritual interests were awakened, there was 
danger to the dogma. Heresy must not be suffered 
to attack the truth, of which the Church was guardian ; 
and they who had made attacks possible must prevent 
them. Humbert de Romanis, a noted Dominican, 
declared that, "even if the pope were a heretic, he 
ii 



1 62 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

should be punished." An apologist may plead that 
the mendicants guarded the sacred possessions of the 
Church, persuaded that the sanctity of their mission, 
the honesty of their purpose, and the worth of the 
dogma justified their use of cruelty. 

It would be idle to estimate the injury to religion 
had there been no check to religious vagaries; idle, 
too, on the other hand, to value the boon had freedom 
of thought been permitted. Yet it is to be asserted 
that had there been liberty to try the things of religion 
the dogma would not have become a dead mass, and 
the Reformation, as a revolt against an irrational 
authority, might not have taken place. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Mendicants and Scholasticism 

The mendicants, attracting good and clever men to 
their Brotherhoods, gave masters to the different pro- 
vinces of activity; and an influence such as they 
manifested in piety and politics was exercised in 
philosophy and theology. An Aristotelian renascence 
was affecting thought at the period of the foundation 
of the Orders, and its significance was not to be 
neglected by defenders of the Church. Philosophy 
might attack and injure religion, and could not be 
ignored. Theology, too, required rational treatment 
at a time when ancient ideas were contrasted with 
Christian, and received no slight commendation. 

Before the appearing of the friars, speculation had 
been deemed hostile to religion ; and the new Aristo- 
telians, the Arabic philosophers, recognising no priestly 
authority, drew to their side many who cherished free- 
dom that they might follow after truth. This freedom 
was counted dangerous, but it might be kept in check 
were philosophy assigned the task of protecting religion 
by vindicating the dogma. The purpose of the thinkers 
in the ranks of the mendicants was to present in in- 
telligible form " the faith which was once delivered 
unto the saints," and, as this aim demanded full and 
thorough knowledge, they turned with enthusiasm to 

163 



1 64 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

learning and with eagerness to speculation. The thir- 
teenth century, which witnessed the changed and 
friendly attitude of the Church to philosophy, is to 
be reckoned an epoch in the history of thought. 

The schools founded by Charlemain gave an impulse 
to the education of the West. Logic was fostered, and, 
where there were thinkers, esteem for the name of 
Aristotle. Churchmen from the first had appreciated 
the need of logic for the defence of the faith, but from 
the second century, it is said, had looked on Aristotle 
as an enemy of Christianity, and on philosophical 
speculation as destructive of orthodox belief. There 
is a tradition that two noted heretics of that century 
styled him their teacher. The Church's attitude to 
philosophy was generally hostile, and was maintained 
down to the age when Abelard disturbed the tranquillity 
of the pious Bernard. 

By long tradition philosophy was thus associated 
with heresy, and yet the mendicants braved this tradi- 
tion. They did more, however, than merely cast aside 
a prejudice. Avicenna's adaptation of Aristotle, and 
the interpretations of Averroes and other Arabic com- 
mentators, were rendered into Latin ; and of these the 
mendicants, contrary to the fashion of churchmen, made 
an intelligent and exhaustive study. Aquinas, too, with 
a scholar s instinct and a philosopher's ambition for 
truth, caused translations to be made directly from the 
Greek. By the labours of the mendicants the reputa- 
tion of Aristotle was changed, and his influence trans- 
ferred to the defence of the faith. 

While Aristotle was greatly suspected by the Fathers 
of the Church and the guardians of the dogma, Plato, 
with his idealism, was not alien to Christian faith 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 165 

setting towards the unseen. Platonism, through the 
Jewish-Alexandrian schools, left an impress on the 
New Testament, and, later, affected directly the scien- 
tific presentation of the dogma. Neo-Platonism, too, 
was not wholly divergent from Christian doctrine when, 
for instance, it sought to bring God and man into a 
unity of thought such as was implied in the Incarnation. 
A lasting impulse to the study of Plato was given when 
Augustine made use of fragments of his teaching. It 
was, however, the controversy respecting universals 
which made Plato and Aristotle prominent in the eyes 
of churchmen. Boethius, translating from Porphyry, 
wrote: "Next concerning genera and species, the 
question indeed, whether they have a substantial ex- 
istence, or whether they consist in bare intellectual 
concepts only, or whether if they have a substantial 
existence, they are corporeal or incorporeal, and 
whether they are separable from sensible things or 
are only in those things, and subsisting about them, 
I shall forbear to determine." The problem thus 
stated was not simply one of philosophy, as was shown 
in the controversy regarding the doctrine of the Real 
Presence. John Scotus Erigena, the philosopher of the 
ninth century, in the progress of this controversy, took 
the position of champion of realism, a Platonist after a 
fashion, but none the less his freedom of speculation 
alarmed the orthodox. He contended that the true 
religion is the true philosophy, and the true philosophy 
the true religion. This identity made the pious suspect 
Erigena and tremble for the faith, though he named the 
name of Plato. Moreover, the hostility to philosophy 
increased when, with its theories of universals, it 
examined the doctrine of the Real Presence. The 



1 66 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

theologians were alarmed when their assertions were 
tested by reason. 

The tenth century, pre-eminently the dark age, has 
been described by Baronius as a time when Christ was 
asleep in the ship. Gerbert, Pope Sylvester IL, was a 
student of physical science, and in the superstition 
rampant at the close of that age he was judged to 
be in league with Satan. At the end of the first 
millennium of Christian history thought was re- 
awakened, and once more the problem of universals 
attracted notice. Nominalism, at that time traced to 
the Aristotelian teaching, was set forth as the theory 
that our knowledge of things is given through the 
senses ; and opponents were able to show it dangerous 
to religion, because destructive of such doctrines as the 
Incarnation and the Real Presence. Realism, on the 
other hand, was used to defend these very doctrines. 
Aristotle and Plato were once more put forward as the 
opponent and defender of the dogma ; while discussions 
passed into contests between reason and faith, freedom 
and authority. 

Anselm, distinguished in his own age and not yet 
forgotten for his subtle thought, used the weapons of 
a philosopher within the domain of theology. His 
saying, Credo ut intelligam, established his orthodoxy, 
and presented a method to thought ; yet the effort to 
understand, though following belief, quickened specu- 
lation and endangered faith. His cherished purpose, 
however, was to verify faith that it might become 
truth for the intellect, and his trust in the divine 
character of the dogma, which prescribed the content 
of faith, made him fearless in his speculative mission. 

Anselm, in part responsible for the changing attitude 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 167 

of the Church to philosophy, did not carry the method 
of free, scientific inquiry to theology, as the famous 
Abelard professed to do. The dogma, indeed, suffered 
nothing at the hands of Abelard ; his speculations were 
pushed to no extravagant length and directed to no 
fantastic topic, yet he was zealously watched as the 
champion of freedom of thought. In his theory of 
conceptualism there was nothing to alarm the most 
prudent guardian of the faith. Battles of words, how- 
ever, were dear to him, and there was no sacred place 
of belief guarded against his entrance. He did not 
attack the Church's teaching, but sought a guarantee 
of truth higher than the mere authority of a council or 
pope. The dogma must be tried by reason, and when 
he examined the doctrine of the Trinity he gave 
Bernard of Clairvaux his opportunity to crush him 
under ecclesiastical censure. 

These two men represented authority and reason. 
Bernard was a dogmatist. The faith had been en- 
trusted to official guardians, and must be preserved. 
Abelard would try it, to see that it was the truth of 
God. Their contrast bears yet a further significance. 
The one stood for piety, the other for science; or 
again, the one represented mystic, the other scholastic 
theology. Abelard's strife was not in vain, and he 
prepared the way for the mendicants, who in due time, 
if they did not assert the supreme right of reason, re- 
cognised its use in the work of systematising and 
explaining the dogma. Peter the Lombard, marking 
a reaction from Abelard, though proving his influence, 
helped m a limited degree the progress of theological 
thought. Abelard had attempted to systematise in his 
Theologia. and had appealed to the Fathers in his Sic 



1 68 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

et Non, setting one against the other, and accepting or 
rejecting their teaching at his pleasure. The Lombard, 
on his part, collected testimonies, harmonised them, and 
used them for a defence of the dogma. He was pro- 
gressive, in so far as he appealed not to the finding of 
a council or pope or to the word of a dictator such as 
Bernard, but to the collective wisdom of the best 
thinkers of the Christian ages. He would not stifle 
the clamour of reason: he would satisfy it, in a 
fashion not dangerous to the Church. Authority 
triumphed, while a semblance of freedom was 
granted. 

The Lombard, in spite of his orthodoxy, was opposed 
from different directions. Walter of St. Victor repre- 
sented those who rejected philosophy as dangerous to 
religion ; while Joachim of Flora prophesied, and many 
believed, that a time would come when contemplative 
piety would conquer, crushing speculation and destroy- 
ing doubt. 

The thirteenth century was an age of activity. In 
the pontificate of Innocent III. the Latin kingdom of 
Constantinople was established ; and, while it endured, 
certain scholars of the West obtained facilities for 
acquiring a knowledge of Greek and gaining acquaint- 
ance with ancient manuscripts. Before the establish- 
ment of that kingdom, however, there were indications 
of the renascence of thought, traced to the influence of 
the Arabic commentators on Aristotle. Heresy, as by 
use and wont, accompanied this revival of speculation. 
A system of pantheism, based, it was said, on Aristo- 
telianism and Neo - Platonism, was enunciated by 
Amalric of Bene and David of Dinant. In 1204 the 
university of Paris condemned the doctrine, and, after 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 169 

an appeal to Rome, Amalric was compelled to retract 
his teaching. In 1210, by an order of the Synod of 
Paris, the works of David of Dinant were burnt, and 
at the fourth Lateran Council those who professed his 
doctrine were condemned as heretics. In the year of 
that Council, 1215, a papal legate prohibited the study 
of Aristotle in the university of Paris ; and so late as 
1231 Gregory ix. required that certain writings, among 
these the physical books of Aristotle, should not be 
read " until they shall have been examined and purged 
from all heresy." A few years later, when the mendi- 
cants had appeared, works of Aristotle were among the 
text-books in use in Paris, and the Aristotelian meta- 
physic was employed in the service of orthodoxy. 
Aristotle himself was no longer hated as the enemy, 
but honoured as the forerunner of Christ. 

The first of the mendicants to render important 
service to theology, by the aid of philosophy, was 
Alexander of Hales. A Gloucestershire man, he 
wandered to Paris, where, after a career as student, 
he continued to teach till his death in 1245. In 1222 
he joined the Franciscans, and, refusing to renounce 
his title of doctor, was the first of his Order to bear 
the dignity. He was styled Doctor Irref ragabilis, and, 
according to some, Theologorum Monarcha. In his 
chief work, Summa Universes Theologice, God, creation, 
redemption, the sacraments were among the subjects 
treated. The book, though based on the Lombard's 
Sentences, was more than a commentary. Using the 
materials of the Lombard, he attempted a scientific 
treatment of theology, and introduced ideas from the 
metaphysic of Aristotle and methods from the logic. 
He was the first churchman to show an extensive 



170 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

knowledge of Aristotle, and to employ it in the 
service of orthodoxy. 

John Fidanza, or Bonaventura, as he is generally 
styled, while aiming at no scientific presentment of 
the dogma, illustrated the new position of the Church 
in relation to philosophy. He was born in 1221, and, 
according to tradition, owed his name to St. Francis, 
who, after working in him a miraculous cure, gazed on 
him and exclaimed, O buona ventura! Joining the 
Minorites in his twenty-second year, he was chosen in 
1256 general of the Order. When he died in 1274 he 
was Bishop of Albano and a cardinal of the Church ; 
and, tradition says, he had refused the archbishopric of 
York and, highest of all, the papal dignity. Two 
centuries later he was canonised by Pope Sixtus IV. 
It was said, in reference to his saintliness, that " all 
men were born with original sin except Bonaventura." 

The life of Francis by Bonaventura is the biography 
of a loving disciple ; and, charmed by it, Dante drew 
the picture of the saint in the Paradiso. The beauty 
of his Latin hymns captivated admirers of literature, 
and touched the hearts of the pious ; and in majestic 
verses Bonaventura manifested the religion which 
found help for action and ease for trouble in con- 
templation of the cross of Christ. 

Thus did he sing of that cross — 

" Quum quiescas aut laboras, 
Quando rides, quando ploras, 
Doles sive guadeas, 
Quando vadis, quando venis, 
In solatiis in pcenis 
Cruceni corde teneas." 

In his metaphysic Bonaventura was a Platonist, 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 171 

after the fashion of Augustine, holding that ideas are 
not in rerum natura, but are thoughts in the divine 
mind, according to which actual things are formed. 
The characteristic of his teaching was the doctrine 
of illumination, a metaphysic of mysticism. Reason, 
he held, is able to discover certain truths, but it is 
through illumination that what is highest is known. 
As the purpose of the religious life is to reach union 
with God through contemplation, so the greatest 
attainment of the intellectual life is knowledge 
acquired through illumination. The practice of the 
Christian virtues is the necessary preparation for 
illumination, which further requires prayer with con- 
templation passing into ecstasy. Mary, who sat at 
the feet of Christ, and Francis, obtained the closest 
union with the divine. 

Bonaventura distinguished between the lumen in- 
ferius, the means of sense-perceptions; the lumen 
exterius, which gives us aptitude for the mechanical 
arts ; the lumen interius, by which philosophical per- 
ception is attained ; and the lumen superius, which is 
grace. This light of grace reveals, on the one hand, 
the sanctifying virtues; and, on the other, shows us 
universals in their reality in God A limit is here set 
to reason, and the highest truths are placed beyond 
the reach of ordinary knowledge. 

A mystic is not captivated by speculation, but in 
seeking a justification of his system he must turn to 
philosophy. Bonaventura, in the very act of demon- 
strating the imperfection of ordinary knowledge as a 
means of reaching the highest truth, turned for aid 
to Aristotle, while his doctrine of the light of grace 
showed an impress of Plato. Willingly or unwillingly, 



172 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

this Doctor Seraphicus, this apologist of the mystics, 
entered on a rational demonstration of his theories, 
illustrating at once the Church's treatment of philo- 
sophy in the thirteenth century, and the activity of 
the mendicants in the realm of speculation. 

While the Franciscans, Hales and Bonaventura, were 
employing philosophy, the one to strengthen the dogma, 
the other to justify mysticism, the Dominicans, repre- 
sented by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, were 
christianising Aristotle, creating Christian Aristotel- 
ianism. Recognising the fascination exercised by Aris- 
totle over speculative minds, and also the advantage 
of pressing him into the service of the Church, they 
adopted his philosophy, having made their own inter- 
pretation, and placed him as an authority alongside of 
the Fathers. From the Fathers and Aristotle baptized 
into their faith they endeavoured to satisfy every 
objection to the dogma, thus giving to theology a cast 
of reason. There was danger, no doubt, to orthodoxy 
when innumerable objections were stated, even while 
they were to be rejected, but there was also the 
Inquisition to crush the unwary who should attack 
official truth. The dogma was to be rationalised, or 
shown to be not contrary to reason, and freedom of 
discussion was to be allowed. At the same time, the 
creed was to be preserved, and not one jot or tittle 
was to pass away. The Dominicans were jealous for 
the dogma, as the Pharisees aforetime for the law. 

Albertus, son of Herr von Bollstadt, was born at 
Laningen in Swabia in the year 1193, and was edu- 
cated in the university of Padua, some say Pavia. 
For ten years he was a constant student of Aristotle, 
and in 1221 or 1223, under the influence of Jordan 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 173 

of Saxony, entered the Dominican Order and began 
the systematic study of theology. His later life was 
full of varied work, as he discharged the duties of a 
professor in more than one university, laboured as 
provincial of his Order in Germany, and occupied the 
high position of Bishop of Regensburg. Apart from 
his philosophical study, he earned the reputation of 
being the most learned man of his time in natural 
science, and for his wide erudition was styled Magnus, 
and Doctor Universalis. His nickname, " Ape of Aris- 
totle/' indicated the line of his study. 

Albertus, as a commentator of Aristotle, presented 
the novel spectacle of a thinker busying himself with 
ideas outside the pale of theology, and working without 
fear of the penalties of the Church. Old things, and 
with them the suspicion of science, were passing away. 
Before entering the Dominican Order, Albertus had 
made a reputation in natural science. When he 
became a friar he turned to theology, but the results 
of his scientific investigations were gathered together 
as a Sum-ma Philosophies Naturalis, commonly styled 
Philosophia Pauperum, since the intention was to 
furnish the mendicants with a knowledge of Aristotle's 
physics. 

As a theologian, Albertus, dealing with the problems 
of the being of God, creation, the soul, sin, angels, 
with the whole content of theology exclusive of re- 
vealed religion, showed himself the typical scholastic 
rationalising the dogma. Aristotle, no longer the enemy, 
was the forerunner of Christ; and the function of 
philosophy, of Aristotelianism, was to set forth in 
system the content of theology, and to demonstrate 
the rationality of the doctrine of the Church. Revealed 



174 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

religion came within the sphere of philosophy when 
it was shown to be above but not contrary to reason. 
Seeing clearly that the process of rationalising must be 
confined to Christianity as natural religion, he placed 
revealed religion outside any possible philosophical 
system. Truth to which the philosopher attains is also 
the possession of the theologian, but specific doctrines 
of Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation, though 
not opposed to it, are beyond reason. Thus did Albertus 
mark off natural from revealed religion, and separate 
philosophy from theology. 

Albertus has been styled Magnus, and yet his fame 
has been eclipsed by that of his distinguished pupil, 
Thomas Aquinas. Between the two, however, though 
jealousy might have produced estrangement, an un- 
broken friendship was maintained. Thomas, born in 
1227, was one of the sons of Landolf, Count of Aquino. 
In his sixteenth year he entered the Dominican Order, 
and in due course taught in Cologne and then in 
Paris, where he joined in the controversy with William 
of St. Amour, defending the idea of mendicancy. After 
a life of unceasing intellectual labour, during which 
he was styled Doctor Angelicus, he died in 1274, and 
fifty years later was canonised. 

The medieval striving after unity is illustrated in 
the life-work of Thomas. As one Church and one State 
existed, in idea at least, so should there be one science, 
with God as centre, correlating all knowledge. Philo- 
sophy, theology, and natural science, as members one 
of another, could not and should not be opposed. The 
Church, Thomas maintained, might of course pronounce 
a theory untenable or a doctrine heretical, but its duty 
was to welcome all knowledge and to foster all 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 175 

scientific inquiry, that men might attain a fuller under- 
standing of God. 

The famous Sv/m/ma, based on the idea of a unity 
of the sciences, dealt in the first portion with theology. 
The second part was an ethical disquisition, in which 
Aristotelian influence was predominant. The doctrine 
of the mean found its place for discussion alongside 
of the will, passion, habit. In yet another division of 
the book the theological virtues, faith, hope, and 
charity, were treated; while the active and contem- 
plative life, the status of priests, monks, and friars, 
were examined. 

The method adopted by Thomas in this work was 
to set forth a thesis, to assail and defend it, and to 
reach conclusions with the aid of authorities. Learning, 
subtle ingenuity, philosophical acumen, were mixed with 
childish argumentation and fanciful speculation. The 
book was comprehensive, indeed, suggestive of a corre- 
lation of knowledge, but its completion was a task 
beyond one man's power. None the less, it was a 
monumental work, testifying to the intellectual char- 
acter of the writer and to the ambition of the age. 
A demonstration of the faith of the Church for the 
Church, the book was accepted by the Dominicans as 
the scripture of orthodoxy, while the writer was 
honoured as the first of theologians. 

In spite of the ideal of unity, Thomas drew a line 
between philosophy and theology. " It is impossible," 
he said, " for the natural reason to arrive at the know- 
ledge of the divine persons. By natural reason we 
may know those things which pertain to the unity of 
the divine essence, but not those which pertain to the 
distinction of the divine persons, and he who attempts 



176 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

to prove by the natural reason the trinity of persons, 
detracts from the rights of faith." 

He held, however, that it was the function of philo- 
sophy to show that reason was not contradicted in 
the dogma. Assured that the authority of Christian 
writers would appeal to none but orthodox believers, 
he addressed to men outside the Church the work 
variously styled, Be veritate catholica, Summa philo- 
sophica, Ad Gentiles. His purpose was to show that 
subjects, such as God, creation, providence, could be 
rationally demonstrated ; while, on the other hand, the 
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, baptism, and 
the eucharist could be shown not to contradict reason. 

In the age of quickened thought Thomas was pre- 
eminently the apologist of the dogma, and no Abelard 
was found in his own day to impugn his logic. Though 
he engaged in the impossible task of embracing all 
knowledge in one science, he rendered service by his 
scientific presentation of theology. His title to fame, 
perhaps his greatest, rests on the fact that he welcomed 
philosophy as a means to establish the truth in the 
dogma. In reason itself he found a process of reve- 
lation, and did not set it in sharp opposition to the 
specific revelations of Christianity. Knowledge de- 
rived through natural or supranatural means is one 
and the same, and truth is not divided. Truth, he 
maintained, can always be shown to be rational, or as 
not contradicting reason. 

While Thomas failed to reduce all knowledge to one 
science, in which theology was to find a place, he 
assisted in realising another ideal, of supreme import- 
ance in medieval times. Innocent III., as political dic- 
tator of the West, marked the supremacy of the Church, 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 177 

and theologjf was of course its possession. Thanks 
largely to Thomas, the Church now ruled philosophy 
and science. Ecclesiastical influence doubtless stimu- 
lated thought for a time, but when it limited the 
freedom of speculation it destroyed the necessary con- 
dition of progress. None the less, the work of Thomas 
made for the advancement of thought. There was, 
indeed, but an accidental fellowship between mendicancy 
and philosophy; and yet to the mendicants, notably 
the Dominicans at first, is to be ascribed the fostering 
of science and the love of learning. From them came 
Albertus, who recognised in Aristotle the forerunner 
of Christ, and Thomas, who found in knowledge a 
pathway to God. 

Among the Thomists there were Augustinians and 
Cistercians, and, at a later period, Jesuits and Carmelites 
of Spain, who showed that the disciples and followers 
of Thomas were not confined to the Dominican Order. 
The greatest to be named with the Thomists was 
Dante, who, though Franciscan in many sympathies, 
turned to Albertus in natural science, and in theology 
and philosophy to Thomas. 

In the majestic verse of the Divine Comedy, Dante 
told the story of the Empire and the Church judging 
the dead ; and, as he passed through hell and purgatory 
to paradise, discoursed now on politics, now on theology, 
now on philosophy, as one who had learned as a pupil 
and thought as a master. 

It was natural, in the association formed between 
philosophy and theology, that some one should attempt 
to show that the reservation of revealed truth from 
the examination and judgment of reason was impolitic 
and needless ; and in due time the Franciscan Raymond 
12 



178 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Lully, born in 1235, came forward, contending that it 
belongs to philosophy to give rational proof of the 
whole dogma, the Trinity and the Incarnation included. 
Lully attempted this proof, arguing at the same time 
that it did not increase the value of belief to receive 
things beyond rational demonstration. Philosophy and 
theology, however, were not to be identified ; but, on 
the contrary, as new thinkers arose, their close re- 
lationship was to be questioned. 

It was possible with Lully to assert the supremacy 
of philosophy, and it was also possible to narrow its 
sphere. Duns Scotus marks a reaction from Thomas, 
as he placed among the articles of faith certain 
doctrines, such as the beginning of the world in time 
and the immortality of the soul, which the great 
Dominican had sought to prove. Duns set himself to 
examine the speculative method of Thomas, that the 
content of faith might be determined, and built up a 
reputation as a critic, securing followers among the 
Franciscans. Rivalry may have exerted little influence 
on Duns himself, but undoubtedly it excited the Scotists 
in opposing the Thomists. 

The birthplace, even the country, of John Duns 
Scotus is unknown, as Scotus is indefinite. He was 
born in 1274 ; and in 1300 was in Oxford, a member 
of the Franciscan Order, and in 1304 in Paris. 
Wadding asserts that he proceeded to Cologne in 1305, 
and to Toulouse in 1307, though these dates have 
been questioned. Appearing in Oxford as a writer on 
Aristotle, he became famous in Paris as the defender 
of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, acquiring 
the title of Doctor Subtilis. He is said to have ex- 
amined some two hundred propositions in reference to 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 179 

this doctrine, and we are told that on one occasion 
the Virgin herself bowed the head of an image in 
reply to a prayer for aid in the argument. 

Duns was a careful student of Aristotle, and it was 
revealed to him that the Greek philosopher was not 
the Christian before Christ whom Albertus and Thomas 
had discovered. Aristotle as an aid to Christian thought 
was tried and not seldom found wanting; and argu- 
ments based on misunderstandings of his teaching were 
cast aside. The whole Thomist position was examined, 
and criticism weakened, if it did not destroy, the 
intimate association of philosophy and theology. Duns, 
however, did not lay himself open to a charge of 
heresy. On the contrary, he was zealous, as ever 
Dominican was, for the stability of the dogma. While 
he could reject arguments for the faith, whether de- 
rived from Aristotle or not, he found no difficulty in 
professing to believe doctrines which had no biblical 
foundation. It was enough that the Church should 
determine objects for belief, since it was the living 
voice of revelation, the organ of the Holy Spirit for 
declaring truth. The decrees of the Church, and not 
the Bible by itself, constituted for him the supreme 
authority in religion. Duns saw with perfect clear- 
ness that this authority, and the doctrines established 
by it, could have no philosophical justification, and 
hence that theology was not akin to other sciences. 
His strong assertion, however, of the Church's right to 
determine the creed saved him from persecution, and 
helped to guard the faith from the attacks of reason. 

Thomas, distinguishing faith from reason, had made 
this declaration : " Sacred doctrine uses human reason 
not for proving faith, for through this the merit of 



1 80 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

faith would be lost." His effort, none the less, was 
to connect the two processes as steps leading towards 
the knowledge of God. The result was that by 
limiting the truths assigned to faith he lessened its 
merit, and impaired the authority of the Church 
which decreed the content of faith. Duns, on his 
part, reduced the function of philosophy, rescuing 
doctrines from its charge, and increased the merit of 
faith, determining it as belief in truths above and 
beyond reason. Theology in his judgment was not 
a speculative science, and he asserted that what is 
true for it might be false for philosophy. He showed, 
too, the essential difference between the philosopher 
and the theologian when, for example, he pointed out 
that the one recognised the existing order as natural, 
while the other viewed it as the result of the Fall. 

Duns was an indeterminist in his doctrine of human 
will, while he separated the understanding from the 
will of God. The divine understanding, he maintained, 
works natwraliter, and is the ground of what is 
necessary ; while the will acts libere, and is the cause 
of all that is contingent. There is no necessity in 
the order of things, which is simply dependent on 
the divine will. As this is a world of contingen- 
cies, and God might act otherwise than He does, there 
can be no rational justification of certain parts of the 
dogma, and these therefore become objects of faith. 
The creation of man, the Incarnation, to take examples, 
have in them no element of necessity. Further, good 
is good, evil is evil, because of the will of God. This 
doctrine was contrary to that of Thomas, who taught 
that the divine will is rationally determined, and that 
God orders what is good because it is good. 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 181 

In regard to universals, Duns agreed with Albertus 
and Thomas, that they exist ante rem, in re, and post 
rem. He refused, however, to recognise with them that 
matter is the determining principle of individuality. 
An animal becomes man, he argued, by addition of 
humanity; man becomes Socrates by addition of 
Socratitas. Not matter but form is the essence of 
individuality. In the teaching of Thomas the in- 
dividual, by its characteristic of matter, is essenti- 
ally defective. Duns, substituting form for matter, 
saw in the individual the realised purpose or end 
of nature. 

This recognition of the value and dignity of 
individual things had important bearing on the 
teaching of William of Occam, who was at once the 
disciple and opponent of Duns. 

Duns is remembered in the history of thought as 
a critic rather than as a system maker, though men 
were called by his name. Without openly declaring 
in favour of the divorce of faith from reason, he aided 
the separation by his doctrine of double truth. He 
was not, however, to be the saviour of philosophy. 
In reality he was a strong defender of the Church. 
The man of simple understanding, bewildered when 
dialecticians argued and theologians wrangled, required 
guidance in faith, and Duns, if he did no other work, 
fostered the assurance of the Church in the value 
of its own authority, and its power to minister peace 
to the doubter. 

The declaration of the separation of philosophy from 
theology, in a sense the death blow of scholasticism, 
is associated with the name of William of Occam. 
William, styled of Occam from his birthplace in 



1 82 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Surrey, was born probably in one of the last years 
of the thirteenth century, and died — again the date is 
uncertain — in 1349. He was a student and teacher 
at Oxford, a teacher also at Paris, and a member of 
the Franciscan Order. 

William was an ardent student of logic, a keen 
opponent of realism. The individual, he held, is the 
only reality. The universal is but "a mental con- 
ception signifying univocally several singulars," and 
has no reality apart from the mental act which pro- 
duces it. Universalia in mente do not therefore exist 
as distinct entities ; and universalia ante rem are 
not substantial existences in God, but are His know- 
ledge, not of universals, but of singulars which alone 
have existence. Occam was an individualist, though 
he and his followers were styled Nominalists. From 
his doctrine of individualism the separation of philo- 
sophy and theology followed. That which exists is 
the individual, and our knowledge cannot transcend 
experience. Belief in that which is beyond experi- 
ence belongs to faith, and we have no rational 
knowledge of the content of revealed religion. Thus 
the dogma is separated from reason, theology from 
philosophy. 

Occam's denial of the existence of universals in 
the mind of God, antecedent to and separate from, 
individual things, associates itself with his doctrine 
of the divine will. Ideas with a separate existence in 
the divine mind, as models of things, would determine 
the divine will, destroying its freedom. That will is 
undetermined, according to Occam, and there is no 
necessity in God's actions. Necessity does not there- 
fore lie at the root of such doctrines as the Incarnation, 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 183 

and these doctrines therefore admit of no rational 
exposition. Philosophy has no function to demon- 
strate the truths of revealed religion, since necessity 
is not bound up with their nature. It follows, too, 
that since God acts from mere good pleasure, there 
is no necessity to be found in the precepts of morals. 
They must be obeyed because God orders them, but 
it is conceivable that good might have been evil, or 
evil good, since God exercises His will according to 
pleasure and not according to necessity. Occam, too, 
like Duns, was an indeterminist in his doctrine of 
human will. 

The chasm between reason and faith was made 
apparent in the teaching of Occam, especially as an 
examination of specific doctrines showed to his satis- 
faction that they were contradicted by reason. Thomas 
had assailed, and at the same time successfully defended, 
every doctrine of the Church. Occam, on the other 
hand, attacked, but offered no rational defence. Trans- 
ferring the dogma to the region of faith more effec- 
tively than Duns, he, too, helped to strengthen the 
Church's authority, and avoided the charge of heresy by 
professing the doctrine of double truth. This doctrine 
was in the last degree dangerous to the stability of 
the dogma and to morals, but it secured its adherents 
from persecution, and the Church was content that 
its creed should be alienated from reason. 

The teaching of Occam had an important bearing on 
religion, which was no longer confused with either 
knowledge or speculation. By checking argumenta- 
tion it directed attention to the facts of the gospel. 
In this manner religion gained, but there was also 
serious loss. For spiritual truth no basis was shown 



1 84 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

except the Church's authority. Philosophy was not 
even required to demonstrate, as the earlier scholastics 
hoped it would, that the dogma was not opposed to 
reason. On the contrary, philosophy, as an exercise 
for logicians, might reduce the creed to a set of 
irrational propositions, and leave it with no defence 
save the assertion of its truth by the representatives 
of an institution. The Church, however, was all- 
powerful, rejoicing in the pride of authority ; and not 
yet were philosophy and science to have freedom to 
pursue their mission, but were even excluded from 
serving as aids to faith. 

In the century before Occam appeared Roger Bacon 
had sought to pursue science, and had suffered and 
failed. Albertus Magnus, by the studies of his earlier 
years, gave an impulse to research ; and it was possible 
that some one would arise, eager for science for its own 
sake, determined to investigate nature without priestly 
guidance or interference. Roger Bacon did not and 
could not separate from the Church. In spite, how- 
ever, of professions, of ecclesiastical or theological 
interests, his mastering desire was to observe and 
understand the things of nature. Unfortunately for 
it and him, the fulness of time had not yet come for 
science. 

Bacon was born, it is conjectured, in Ilchester in 
1214. He studied in Oxford and Paris, and entered 
the Franciscan Order. He roused suspicion among the 
Brothers by engaging in experiments in physics ; and 
it is chronicled that by the year 1267 he had spent two 
thousand librae " on secret books and various experi- 
ments and languages and instruments and tables." The 
Superior enjoined him to discontinue his researches 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 185 

and not to publish his discoveries. A forced exile 
of ten years in France probably implied that he had 
disobeyed the injunction. Pope Clement iv. befriended 
him, asking him to set forth his views on philosophy, 
but giving him no substantial help for his experiments. 

In fifteen or eighteen months works known as Opus 
Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium were prepared, 
in spite of difficulties, and sent to Rome. The 
difficulties were real. The Franciscans, he wrote, 
"kept me on bread and water, suffering no one to 
have access to me, fearful lest my writings should 
be divulged to any other than the pope and them- 
selves." Clement died and Bacon was left without 
help. In 1278, at a chapter of the Order at Paris, 
he was condemned "propter quasdam novitates," 
and was imprisoned, probably till 1292, the date of 
the last of his numerous writings. After that year 
there is no definite information regarding him, though 
there is the report that at his death he was buried 
among the Minorites at Oxford. 

In his Opus Majus Bacon set forth his conception 
of the true method of study, and demanded that all 
presuppositions founded on authority and custom 
should be cast aside. The relations of theology and 
philosophy were considered, and he had no convic- 
tion that reason should not minister to faith. With 
scholarly instinct he contended, in connection with 
theology, that Hebrew and Greek should be learned as 
preliminaries to the study of the Bible and Aristotle. 
In the same work he dealt with arithmetic, geometry, 
astrology, music, and optics. Bacons fame rests, how- 
ever, on the fact that he was an experimental scientist. 
To him the thirteenth century awarded that reputation 



1 86 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of trafficking in magic which the tenth century had 
given to Pope Sylvester II. Bacon, without exaggera- 
tion, may be styled a martyr, who lived in an age when 
the study of the physical works of Aristotle led to 
talk but not to investigation, and when superstition 
was too rampant to tolerate even the crude experi- 
ments of the beginnings of science. 

He is worthy to be remembered, if for nothing 
else, on account of the enthusiasm which inspired him, 
amidst natural difficulties and the persecution of 
enemies, to pursue science for its revelations. In 
one of his letters addressed to the pope he wrote : 
" But how often I was looked upon as a dishonest 
beggar, how often I was repulsed, how often put 
off with empty hopes, what confusion I suffered 
within myself, I cannot express to you. Even my 
friends did not believe me, as I could not explain the 
matter to them ; so I could not proceed in this way. 
Reduced to the last extremities, I compelled my poor 
friends to contribute all that they had and to sell many 
things and to pawn the rest, often at usury, and I 
promised them that I would send to you all the details 
of the expenses and would faithfully procure full pay- 
ment at your hands. And yet owing to their poverty 
I frequently abandoned the work, frequently I gave it 
up in despair and forbore to proceed." 

William of Occam was the last of the mendicants 
deserving to be named in the history of philosophy. 
In him we have the complete separation of philosophy 
from theology, the demonstration of the impossibility 
of rationalising the dogma and including it in the 
content of philosophy. His writings were proscribed 
by the university of Paris, yet his doctrines became 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 187 

popular, attracting men beyond the ranks of the 
Franciscans. Some rejoiced to see piety freed from 
the subtleties of logic; others recognised that philo- 
sophy had been enfranchised, even though the Church 
was still strong to crush all dangerous speculation. 
These subtleties Erasmus described as " quibblings 
about notions, and relations, and formalitations, and 
quiddities, and hsecceities, which no eye could follow 
out but that of a lynx, which is said to be able in 
the thickest darkness to see things that have no 
existence." 

In the domain of dogmatic theology the great 
schoolmen were pre-eminent, primarily • interested as 
they were in the creed of the Church. The work 
of Thomas Aquinas, for example, included the present- 
ment of the doctrines of the Trinity, the person of 
Christ, redemption, the sacraments, grace. The 
Thomists, among whom the Dominicans were con- 
spicuous, accepted his expositions, while his formidable 
critics were the Scotists, who, for the most part, were 
Franciscans. The Dominican spirit manifested itself 
in conservative orthodoxy; and, on the other hand, 
the more democratic and progressive Franciscans 
indulged in criticism and welcomed novelty. This 
characteristic difference suggests an essential opposi- 
tion between the Orders, and certainly the idea of 
rivalry is with difficulty excluded. Preachers and 
Minorites, in any case, were frequently ranged on 
opposite sides, as when the immaculate conception of 
the Virgin was a burning question, or when the infinite 
or finite magnitude of the first sin was a problem. 

The activity of the mendicants in the work of 
theology may be illustrated from their treatment 



1 88 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

of the doctrine of redemption. Aquinas, admitting 
the death of Christ to be not the only possible means 
for the remission of sins, argued that it was the most 
fitting, since it won for men "justifying grace" and 
" the glory of beatitude." He debated whether Christ 
suffered as to His divinity or humanity, and further, 
examined His death under the conception of satisfac- 
tion and in relation to merit. Christ, he maintained, 
since His suffering was voluntary, merited exaltation ; 
and, seeing that exaltation could not be conferred 
on Him, the reward due to merit passed to the Church 
of which He is Head. " The head and members are," 
he said, " as it were, one mystical person, and thus the 
satisfaction of Christ belongs to all believers, just 
as to His own members." Duns, in opposition to 
Thomas, contended that satisfaction and merit have 
value according to the estimate of the person to whom 
the satisfaction is made, and that the value of Christ's 
death was judged according to the good pleasure of 
God. That value could not be infinite, seeing that 
sin, for which the death took place, is committed by 
finite beings; and again, seeing that Christ suffered 
in His human or finite nature. Then, too, an infinite 
merit is not possible, as everything is good or bad, 
small or great, according to God's will, and is not 
needed, since He can determine the worth of merit at 
His pleasure. The death of Christ has not, therefore, 
according to Duns, a merit which passes to the Church, 
to the members of His mystical body. 

Controversy in theology has not been confined to 
the days of the schoolmen, but the rivalry of the 
Orders undoubtedly gave sharpness to their strife. 
The friars wrangled, and many of their disputations 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 189 

were mere battles of words. These men, however, are 
not to be ignored, since the history of theology in the 
pre-Reformation centuries is a chapter in the larger 
history of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. 

In the period of the decline of scholasticism, before 
Erasmus satirised the quibblings of the schoolmen, the 
German mystics marked the attempt of piety to free 
itself from the grasp of logical formula, from hard 
syllogistic expression or presentation, in order to 
become living religion acceptable to and intelligible by 
the people. While seeking to change the method and 
expression of thought, these men did not represent a 
recoil from metaphysics, a reaction against speculation. 
On the contrary, in the sermons in which they sought 
to popularise theology, they indulged in disputation ; 
and Eckhart, the most noted preacher among the 
mystics, was a thinker whose teaching disturbed the 
peace of the Church. 

Eckhart was born, it is supposed, in Thuringia, 
somewhere about the year 1260, and was a student 
and teacher in Paris. He entered the Dominican 
Order, and in 1304 was provincial in Saxony, and in 
1307 vicar-general in Bohemia. His fame as a 
preacher was spread abroad through Germany. In 
1317 the Bishop of Strasburg condemned his doctrine; 
and at last, in 1327, he was summoned, at the 
instance of the Archbishop of Cologne, to answer 
before the Inquisition. Agreeing to recant whatever 
he had taught contrary to the faith, he appealed to 
Rome ; he died before the papal answer was published, 
in which twenty-eight theses set forth by him were 
declared to be heretical. Eckhart, perhaps through 
the bias of his nationality, was not concerned to 



190 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

uphold the authority of the Church as a basis of 
doctrine. His aim was to give an intelligible account 
of Christianity, and, as a preacher, to present it in 
attractive form. He was a student of Aristotle, 
according to the prevailing fashion of his age ; but he 
found in Platonism or Neo-Platonism the ideas which 
led him to mysticism and caused him, on account of his 
teaching that God is all and in all, to be suspected of 
Pantheism. 

According to Eckhart, the absolute becomes God 
only when it utters itself, becomes God as Trinity in 
the act of self-knowledge. The word which God 
utters is the Son, and that which binds Father and 
Son is the Spirit. The act of self-knowledge is God 
as subject beholding Himself in the Son as object, 
while the love of the one to the other, springing 
from this act, is the Spirit. In the Son as the object 
of this act of self-knowledge is included the totality 
of things. Thus all things exist in God from the 
beginning. Yet apart from the world existing in 
image in His mind, is the world created in time out 
of nothing. The independent existence of this 
created world is only apparent, though Eckhart does 
not explain the apparent independence. He insists 
that were God to withdraw Himself from the things 
existing in time they would become nothing. They 
do not become nothing, however, because there is in 
them a divine element, which marks an identity with 
God. That identity is not perfect, on account of an- 
other and sensuous element which creates a dualism. 
In the nature of things, in virtue of God being their 
essence, communicated by grace, there is the tendency 
to overcome this dualism and to return to Him. The 



MENDICANTS AND SCHOLASTICISM 191 

return is possible through the human soul, the 
representative and highest of creation, having the 
power to think all things and so to make them lose 
their limitations. The life of the soul is a return to 
God, and final union can only follow the death of the 
body. God must be the one object of thought, the 
human will must suffer negation that it may become 
one with the divine will. Individuality is in this 
fashion to be lost, that all creatures may be one ; 
and this one is the Son whom the Father has begotten. 

In the ethics of Eckhart, asceticism, exemplified in 
the fastings and vigils prescribed by the Church, was 
at most a preparation for the union of the soul with 
God. The assertion, he declared, that such works 
effect salvation is the statement of the devil. Eckhart 
repudiated the Church as a necessary agent in salvation, 
which is unity with God ; and claimed for himself the 
right, apart from any accredited system, to think 
out the truths of Christianity. 

Eckhart was the master of mystics such as Tauler, 
the inspirer of the German Theology which Luther, 
in 1518, caused to be published. The unknown author 
of that work quickened the thought of Luther, pre- 
paring him for the revolt ; and so the analysis of 
history places the mystic piety of Eckhart among the 
innumerable causes of the Reformation, links together 
the revivals of the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
and brings into one association of religion Dominicans 
and Reformers. 

Hales, Bonaventura, Albertus, Thomas, Bacon, 
Duns, Occam, Eckhart, friars each of Francis or 
Dominic, are not the least in the kingdom of thought. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Degradation of the Orders 

The intense zeal of Dominic and the fervent piety of 
Francis, in the custom of experience, continued in 
individuals but departed from the crowd; and con- 
sequently, though the founder's name was preserved in 
each Order, many of the friars had neither zeal nor 
piety. The natural history of a revival shows the 
periods of birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death, 
and in the mendicant movement these stages, if perhaps 
we omit the last, may be marked. Mendicancy, a 
religious revival, was associated with organisations 
which endured after the extinction of the fire of 
enthusiasm which had blazed at their foundation. 
They endured, but their character and reputation 
changed. Chaucer and Langland, Dunbar and 
Lindsay, Erasmus and George Buchanan, each held 
up the friars to scorn ; but before Chaucer wrote " The 
Sompnoures Tale " the degradation of the Orders had 
begun. As early as 1233 Gregory ix. reminded the 
Dominicans that their vow of poverty was taken to 
be kept. In the middle of the thirteenth century the 
Benedictine, Matthew Paris, wrote in this fashion: 
" It is horrible, it is an awful presage, that in three 
hundred years, in four hundred years, even in more, 
the old monastic Orders have not so entirely 

192 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 193 

degenerated as these fraternities. The friars, who 
have been founded hardly forty years, have built, 
even in the present day in England, residences as lofty 
as the palaces of our kings. These are they who, 
enlarging day by day their sumptuous edifices, 
encircling them with lofty walls, lay up within them 
incalculable treasures, imprudently transgressing the 
bounds of poverty, and violating, according to the 
prophecy of the German Hildegard, the very funda- 
mental rules of their profession. These are they who, 
impelled by the love of gain, force themselves upon 
the last hours of the lords, and of the rich whom 
they know to be overflowing with wealth ; and these, 
despising all rights, supplanting the ordinary pastors, 
extort confessions and secret testaments, boasting of 
themselves and of their Order, and asserting their vast 
superiority over all others. So that no one of the 
faithful now believes that he can be saved unless 
guided and directed by the Preachers or Friar Minors. 
Eager to obtain privileges, they dwell in the courts 
of kings and nobles, as counsellors, chamberlains, 
treasurers, bridesmen, or notaries of marriages ; they 
are the executioners of the papal extortions. In their 
preaching they sometimes take the tone of flattery, 
sometimes of biting censure ; they scruple not to reveal 
confessions or to bring forward the most rash accusa- 
tions/' These are the words of a member of one of the 
old monkish Orders, but as he had praised the friars 
at an earlier period they may have been dictated by a 
passion higher than jealousy. Another witness may 
be cited, one certainly not moved by a sinister passion. 
In 1257, Bonaventura, the general of the Franciscans, 
lamented that his Brotherhood was the object of 

!3 



194 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

popular dislike on account of greed, idleness, worldli- 
ness, and scandalous conduct. Ten years later he 
wrote, after noting certain grave faults : " It is a foul 
and profane lie to assert oneself the voluntary- 
professor of absolute poverty and then refuse to 
submit to the lack of anything, to beg abroad like a 
pauper and to roll in wealth at home." In the 
fourteenth century things were not better, since St. 
Brigitta in her Revelations, at that time recognised 
as divinely inspired, spoke thus of the two Orders : 
" Although founded upon vows of poverty, they have 
amassed riches, place their whole aim in increasing 
their wealth, dress as richly as bishops, and many of 
them are more extravagant in their jewellery and 
ornaments than laymen who are reputed wealthy." 

The love of money was prominent among the causes 
of the corruption of the mendicants. It captured 
them, in spite of the vow of poverty. As early as 
1230, four years after the death of the saint, certain 
Franciscan Brothers solicited a papal interpretation of 
the Rule in respect of the holding of property. 
Ugolini, Gregory ix., in the bull Quo elongati, decided 
that Francis could not bind his successors, that his 
Testament was simply a private interpretation of the 
official Rule, and that agents acting for donors could 
hold property and spend money on behalf of the friars. 
This decision marked a relaxation of the vow of 
poverty, and issued in decadence with evil repute. 
The decision, moreover, was in accordance with the 
papal policy to reduce the enthusiasm of the mendi- 
cants, especially the Franciscans, to practical sense, so 
that representing poverty without suffering extreme 
hardship, and marking no violent contrast between 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 195 

themselves and the secular priests, they might be 
revered for piety, and recognised as worthy servants 
of the Church, The consequences of this policy were 
far-reaching. The Dominicans retained the name 
without the character of mendicants, as they ministered 
to social classes for whose sake it was not necessary 
to be poor. It was different, however, with the 
Franciscans, because poverty stamped them as 
virtuous in the eyes of the people among whom they 
laboured. The papal policy divided them, and while 
some listened to Rome, others opposed popes, sided 
with Imperialists, disobeyed ministers-general, and, 
endeavouring to keep the vow without subterfuge or 
attempting to make poverty the cardinal virtue, 
suffered even torture and death. 

One of the lucrative sources of income was the 
traffic in indulgences. Neither Dominic nor Francis 
condemned this system of pardons, though the sale 
was contrary to their professed ideals. Gregory ix., 
at the translation of the body of Francis, granted 
indulgences to visitors to the church built by Elias 
of Cortona, and inaugurated the custom, followed by 
one pope after another, of enriching the Brothers by 
associating indulgences with the shrines of saints who 
had been members of one or other of the Orders. The 
Portiuncula was the most noted of all the indulgences, 
as legend ascribed its suggestion to Christ, and 
gradually its privileges were extended. So wide- 
spread was the system that the Dominicans counted as 
their own three hundred and eighty-two different 
indulgences granted before the close of the reign of 
Leo x., and each of these meant wealth. And, as if 
this wealth did not suffice, Boniface viu, gave the 



196 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

Dominicans, when re-building a church in Rome, 
certain monies obtained from usurers. The friars 
profited where the defrauded suffered. 

Very early in the history of the Orders privileges 
began to be bestowed, many of which were contrary to 
the vow and spirit of poverty. Honorius in. gave the 
Dominicans the right to celebrate mass, when the 
secular priest was silent, in districts under censure and 
interdict ; and in 1241 they obtained permission to beg 
within the territories of the excommunicated. Again, 
while bishops were commanded to absolve the friars 
after confession, the superiors of the Orders were 
enabled to free them from penance or ecclesiastical 
punishment. By other privileges, gradually acquired, 
the friars were allowed to preach, to hear confessions, 
and also to bury the dead in the churches of the 
Orders, and for these offices to exact dues. The result 
of these benefits was that, from their first intrusion into 
the various dioceses, the friars were at open feud with 
the parochial clergy, who found their authority and 
their incomes alike diminished. Yet these clerics were 
as a rule ignorant, and sometimes vicious, and it was 
a relief to laymen to have spiritual guides with a 
reputation of decency and piety. Innocent in., in a 
sermon at the Lateran Council, declared that the 
priests were the chief corrupters of the people, and 
the statement was endorsed by Honorius ill. ; while 
Bonaventura and Aquinas, to take later examples, 
each denounced the ignorance of the churchmen. So 
long as the pious reputation continued, laymen flocked 
to the friars, who had difficulty at first in meeting 
their wants. And even in the days of their corruption 
they were in constant requisition, since there were 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 197 

many who preferred to confess to strangers, whom 
they probably hoped never again to see. 

In addition to preaching, hearing confessions, and 
officiating at burials, the mendicants administered the 
sacraments ; and naturally, as things spiritual had 
their price, the priests had no dealings with them. For 
a short time there was a disputation among the 
schoolmen regarding the right of the popes to bestow 
priestly privileges on their new favourites. The 
argument, however, caused little stir, as the parish 
clergy, whose province was invaded, were seldom 
respected. Yet the bishops sided with them, as they 
also were suffering loss. In the system of confession 
many cases — reserved cases they were styled — were 
referred to them. The mendicants, however, disposed 
of all such business to the financial loss of the episcopal 
judges, and thus increased the number of their 
enemies. 

It was of advantage to the cause of religion that the 
dispensers of sacraments and the hearers of confessions 
should be worthy of honour, and the sanctity of the 
function might have been expected to conduce to 
spiritual decency; but none the less the friars, in 
performing duties for which they obtained money, 
suffered from the general corruption of the Church. 
When dogma was but the letter of religion and ritual 
a masquerade, the Dominicans arose to substitute the 
spirit for the letter, and the Franciscans to show the 
beauty of deeds of righteousness; but when they 
assumed the functions of the seculars their piety lost 
intensity and their power passed into the conventional 
authority of churchmen. 

Innocent iv., by a bull styled Crudelissimum edictum 



198 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

by the Dominicans, curtailed the privileges of the 
friars, and, dying soon after its publication, was said 
to be done to death by their prayers ; while the proverb 
had vogue, " a litaniis praedicatorum libera nos 
Domine." John xxi., at a later date, showed 
antagonism, and when the falling roof of his palace 
destroyed him the friars saw the intervention of God. 
Honorius iv., too, perished when he was about to issue 
an order regarding preaching and hearing confessions. 
There was no continuity in the papal policy, but the 
Orders, down to the period of the Reformation, 
suffered but temporary loss of privileges once gained. 

Boniface VIII., with characteristic imperiousness, 
unrepressed by the tragic fate of predecessors, 
ordained that a friar, before preaching in a parish 
church, must obtain permission, that a bishop could 
prohibit him from hearing confessions, and that a 
quarter of the fees or gifts he received in a district 
must be given to the priest. The struggle was not 
yet ended, and one pope after another was involved. 
Clement VI. received a petition signed by cardinals, 
bishops, and priests, asking him to abolish the Orders 
or revoke their privileges, and made answer — 

" And if their preaching be stopped, about what can 
you preach to the people ? If on humility, you your- 
selves are the proudest of the world, arrogant and 
given to pomp. If on poverty, you are the most 
grasping and most covetous, so that all the benefices 
in the world will not satisfy you. If on chastity — but 
we will be silent on this, for God knoweth what 
each man does and how many of you satisfy your 
lusts. You hate the mendicants and shut your doors 
on them lest they should see your mode of life, while 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 199 

you waste your temporal wealth on pimps and 
swindlers. You should not complain if the mendicants 
receive some temporal possessions from the dying to 
whom they minister when you have fled, nor that 
they spend it in buildings where everything is ordered 
for the honour of God and the Church, in place of 
wasting it in pleasure and licentiousness. And because 
you do not likewise, you accuse the mendicants, for 
most of you give yourselves up to vain and worldly 
lives." 

Clement's words were a rebuke to men who had 
shamefully neglected duty. The Black Death had 
mown down multitudes, and everywhere the friars 
acted as ministers of mercy, gaining gratitude with 
substantial reward, while the parish priests fled from 
service. When at last the plague had passed, the 
priests, seeing the gains of their opponents, sought 
Clement's aid, and received a deserved rebuke. Two 
centuries later the plague of 1528 showed that the 
Franciscans had not forgotten the traditions of their 
Order. It is difficult, indeed, to understand how men 
corrupted by wealth should have displayed the zeal 
for which they were commended by Clement. The 
explanation, of course, might be that their evil repu- 
tation was undeserved. This, however, is certain, that 
while there were always men in the Orders to soil their 
fame, there were also men, few at times though they 
were, who proved themselves worthy to bear the name 
of Dominic or Francis ; and in days of trouble the 
worthier sort carried with them the baser, who, 
knowing how to sin, knew also how to obey. 

The struggle between the mendicants and the 
parochial clergy, which continued till the Reforma- 



200 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

tion, presented within the domain of Christianity the 
unholy spectacle of a contest for privilege. At the 
fifth Lateran Council a vigorous attempt was made 
to end the strife in favour of the clergy ; but Leo x., 
while forced to listen to the woeful tale of the clergy, 
feared to injure the friars, who could make or mar 
the authority of a Bishop of Rome. 

With fine courtesy Dante put the praise of Francis 
into the lips of Thomas Aquinas, who at the same time 
pronounced a condemnation of the Dominicans. Some 
had returned to the ways of Dominic — 

" But so few they be, 
That little cloth would make their cowls, I trow." 

It was Bonaventura whom Dante chose to utter 
the commendation of Dominic and the censure of 
the Franciscans. As a Dominican had described his 
own Order, it was fitting that this characterisation of 
the Franciscans should proceed from one of them- 
selves — 

" His Brotherhood, that once straight onward moved 
And in his footsteps trod, now turns so far 
That what was foremost now is hindmost proved." 

Dante suffered no punishment devised by the 
Inquisition, but it is not surprising that there should 
be a story that he was required to give assurance of 
his faith. 

Receiving many favours from Rome, the mendicants 
were not slow in their gratitude to emphasise the 
papal theory, the divinely appointed headship of the 
pope. It was necessary, too, that they should justify 
the power which bestowed their privileges. The 
Franciscan Alvarus Pelagius, to take an example from 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 201 

the fourteenth century, demanded adoration for the 
Bishop of Rome as a divine person, declaring, at the 
same time, that from the days of St. Peter the Imperium 
Romanum belonged to his successors. Among medieval 
writers, however, it was Thomas Aquinas who stated 
most clearly the theory that the Church is centred in 
the pope ; and it was laid down by him, " that to be 
subject to the Roman pontiff is essential to salvation." 
Long after the days of the schoolmen, when the 
Councils of Constance and Basel had pronounced 
against it, Cardinal Torquemada wrote a defence of 
the papal theory, basing his argument on the teaching 
of Aquinas, and securing the laudation of Rome. The 
infallibility of the pope might indeed have been the 
official doctrine generations before the Vatican 
Council, had not certain men occupied the papal 
chair. The Babylonish Captivity, the Great Schism, 
and the degradation of the age preceding the Reforma- 
tion were fatal to the progress of that doctrine ; as the 
libertinism of the Court of Avignon, the feuds of rival 
pontiffs, and the vices of men like Alexander VI. and 
Julius 11. destroyed popular esteem of the papacy, and 
silenced the advocates of infallibility. 

The relaxation of the vow of poverty destroyed the 
harmony of the Franciscan Order. Pope Gregory ix. 
found in Elias of Cortona an agent for his purposes. 
The earliest biographer of Francis, writing while Elias 
was powerful, represented the saint and the Brother as 
friendly associates. It is difficult to understand how 
Francis could have mistaken the man, who was to aid 
in changing the character of the Brotherhood founded 
amidst glowing piety and poetic enthusiasm. There 
is no need to think of Elias as another Judas. He was 



202 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

anxious for a religious reformation, but the love of 
power ruined him when he came to govern. Even 
while he lived in splendour no charge of avarice was 
preferred against him, and it is evident that he be- 
lieved the sin of worldliness could be combated though 
the Order had great possessions. For five years he had 
governed, with the title of vicar, when Francis died ; 
and it was he who announced the fact of the stigmata 
to the Brothers, and set about the erection of the 
splendid basilica which was to contain the body. In 
spite of his prominence, however, the upholders of the 
Rule rejected him in 1229, and chose Giovanni Parenti 
as minister-general. Their fury was roused when they 
learned that money was being gathered to meet the 
expense of the basilica. In front of the building Elias 
had placed a marble box for the gifts of visitors, and 
it is related that Friar Leo went to one of his com- 
panions, asking if he should break it. The answer 
was : " Yes, if you are dead ; but if you are alive, let it 
alone, for you will not be able to endure the persecu- 
tions of Elias/' Leo, however, did not wait till he was 
dead, but with his associates broke the box. 

Elias directed the raising of the great church, which 
was worthy of the fame of the saint, though singularly 
out of harmony with his poverty; and at last, in 1232, 
he was elected minister-general. In his official work 
he proved a tyrant. While vicar he had caused 
Antony of Padua to be scourged, and now he cast 
Caesarius of Spires, the provincial of Germany, into a 
prison, where he died. In arbitrary fashion he refused 
to summon the chapter, till at last the pope interfered. 
The opposition to him was widespread, as the zealous 
upholders of the Rule were joined by the moderate 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 203 

reformers, such as the friars in England, who desired 
a relaxation in regard to the pursuit of learning and 
the holding of property. These moderate men he had 
harassed in their religious work, and they determined 
to have him removed. At last, in 1239, Gregory caused 
a chapter to be held, at which he demanded the resig- 
nation of the minister-general. The pope and his 
former ally were now at enmity. Elias hastened to 
Frederick 11., the opponent of the political power of 
the papacy, and with him suffered excommunication. 

In the legend of Francis it is narrated that the saint 
learned through a vision that Elias was to revolt 
against the Order and the Church, and was to be 
damned. He was able, however, to have the divine 
sentence reversed, so that Elias, enlightened in his last 
hour, died pardoned by the pope, and clothed in the 
Franciscan habit. Before this final reconciliation with 
the Church, Elias was the supporter of Frederick in 
his strife with Rome, and was even on one occasion 
his ambassador at the Court of Constantinople ; but on 
the death of the emperor he returned to Cortona, where 
he built a magnificent church for the Franciscans. 

Amidst the troubles within the Order two parties 
were formed, the Spirituals, as they were after- 
wards named, who professed strict adherence to the 
Rule, and the Fratres de Communitate, afterwards 
known as Conventuals from living in convents, who 
desired its relaxation as experience dictated. One 
party was in power, and then another. Thus Cresen- 
tius, who was minister-general from 1244 to 1248, 
followed the example of Elias, and, loving the display 
of wealth and showing a special aversion to poor 
dwellings, erected splendid monasteries. At the same 



204 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

time he tried to induce the friars to pursue learning. 
John of Parma, who followed, was welcomed by the 
Spirituals as a saviour of the Order. 

The question of poverty continued to disturb the 
Franciscans down to the century of the Reformation. 
It affected imperial politics when Lewis of Bavaria 
and John xxn. were at strife, and called forth a mass 
of writings, associated with such names as Alexander 
of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Occam. 
Hales, one of the writers of the Declaratio Quatuor 
Magistrorum, sought to justify the changes inspired 
by Gregory ix. ; but he failed to pacify the rigorous 
Spirituals, who would allow no relaxation, thinking 
to work out their salvation through the severities of 
asceticism. They belonged to the great order of fana- 
tics, existing before and through the Christian cen- 
turies, who for a spiritual offering render to God the 
sacrifice of their emaciated or broken bodies. The 
temperament which led them to asceticism led them 
to rebel against the Church, which fostered the Con- 
ventuals in their freedom; and their pride of faith 
prepared them for the doctrine that a new religious 
era was at hand. This doctrine was ascribed to 
Joachim of Flora, the Baptist of St. Francis, as Renan 
styled him, whose reputation in the middle of the 
thirteenth century reached a prominence to which it 
had not attained in his own generation. 

In three prophetic writings Joachim, who lived in 
the last generation of the twelfth century, declares 
that there are three ages in the world's history, — the 
first under the rule of the Father, the second under 
that of the Son, and the third under that of the Holy 
Ghost. The second age, of the Son, was to endure for 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 205 

1260 years, while the third was to be the age of per- 
fection. 

In 1254 a book was published, The Everlasting 
Gospel, containing Joachim's three writings with an 
introduction, in which the evils of the Church were 
displayed and his prophetic warnings applied. The 
Order of St. Francis, it was set forth, was to absorb 
all other Orders, and was to take the place of the 
Church itself. In this religious society men were to 
live at peace, were to have all things in common, and 
misery was to disappear from their midst. That 
which was most characteristic was the statement that 
the eternal gospel was revealed by Francis, the angel 
of Revelation xiv. 6, and that in 1260 it would replace 
Christ's gospel. John of Parma, charged with being 
the writer, was compelled to resign his office of 
minister-general, though the real author, as was 
afterwards believed, was Gherardo da Borgo San 
Donnino, who was condemned to imprisonment for 
life for the crime of publishing the book. John of 
Parma himself was tried, but acquitted. The book 
was officially condemned in 1255 ; but none the less, 
on account of its expression of opposition to the 
Church, and its promise of an ideal age of simplicity, 
it intensified division among the Franciscans. 

The Conventuals, taking advantage of the troubles 
caused by the publication of The Everlasting Gospel, 
instigated Alexander iv. to renew the interpretation 
of the Rule, made by Innocent IV., so as to allow 
agents to manage and the Holy See to hold property 
for the Order. Gregory x., in 1275, endeavoured to 
reverse this policy, and to secure strict obedience to 
the Rule, but his effort was vain. Nicholas in., under- 



206 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

taking a final settlement of the question, published 
the bull Exiit qui seminat, which simply continued 
the arrangement proposed by Innocent IV. The 
significant declaration was made that Christ and the 
apostles had renounced the possession of all property. 

In due time a statute of the Order enacted that 
there should be a procurator attached to each house, 
to receive money for the friars in name of the Church. 
This was done "to preserve the Order in its purity, 
and prevent the brethren being immersed in secular 
affairs." In spite of the bull the strife was not 
finished. Brothers who refused to beg for money 
were imprisoned by their superiors. At last the 
Spirituals appealed to Clement V. to disjoin them from 
the Conventuals. The pope was sympathetic, and 
though not agreeing to separation, issued a decree 
protecting them from persecution. During the nego- 
tiations the extremists among the Italian Spirituals 
seceded in their impatience and elected a minister- 
general. Clement was enraged, and the machinery 
of the Inquisition was put in use. His successor, 
John xxii., resolved on stamping out insubordination, 
issued a bull, Quorumdam, giving superiors the right 
to determine the vestments of the friars, and also the 
amount of grain, wine, and oil to be stored in a 
convent. Vestments and stores were burning ques- 
tions, and the pope answered them in common sense 
fashion. The extreme Spirituals, however, holding 
that the garments should be but the simplest cover- 
ings, and that storage of food indicated a mistrust in 
providence, denied the right of the pope to interfere 
with what they counted gospel teaching regarding 
poverty. The pope declared in reply, that the rejec- 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 207 

tion of the bull would be punished as a heresy. Thus 
was a new heresy created, and the inquisitors, Domin- 
ican and Franciscan, pursued many of the Spirituals 
to death. 

In the south of France there were violent opponents 
of Pope John, who saw in him the anti-Christ, and in 
the Church the harlot of the Apocalypse. These men 
had been moved by the prophecies of Peter John Olivi, 
who had arisen in the latter half of the thirteenth 
century, and by his disciple Ubertino of Casale, who 
identified the papacy with the beast which rose out 
of the sea (Rev. xiii.). Under the teaching of Olivi, 
himself influenced by Joachim of Flora, some of the 
extreme Spirituals of his own day, obtaining per- 
mission from Coelestine v., settled in Greece and on 
some of the islands of the Archipelago. There they 
continued, and Boniface viil, endeavouring to dislodge 
them, met with violent resistance. 

The application of the idea of anti-Christ to a pope 
was not new. In Swabia, in the thirteenth century, 
the Dominicans had taught that Innocent IV. was anti- 
Christ, and the emperor his scourge. " There were two 
Churches," to use the words of the French Spirituals, 
quoted in a papal bull, " one carnal, overburdened with 
possessions, overflowing with wealth, polluted with 
wickedness, over which ruled the Roman pontiff* and 
the inferior bishops : one spiritual, frugal, without un- 
cleanness, admirable for its virtue, with poverty for 
its raiment ; it contained only the Spirituals and their 
associates, and was ruled by men of spiritual life 
alone." The pope, John xxil, not content with the 
bull from which these words are taken, resorted to 
the Inquisition. His enemies were violent, and he 



2o8 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

would silence them; but, far off though they were, 
they helped to prepare the way for the Reformation, 
when attacking the sanctity of popes and making 
common the thought that the existing Church was not 
identified with true religion. 

While the Inquisition was doing its dread work, 
events presented a new and serious issue. A Domin- 
ican condemned the statement, made by one of the 
heretics, that Christ had no possessions. The Fran- 
ciscans, led by Berengar Taloni of Narbonne, delib- 
erated, and in the general chapter held in 1322 
formally decided in favour of the doctrine. The bull 
of Nicholas in. was brought forward, which declared 
that Christ and the Apostles possessed nothing. In 
due course an appeal was made to John, who, without 
definite pronouncement on the question regarding 
Christ, discussed the practice of the Roman See 
holding property for the Order, and, in spite of 
the declarations of predecessors, decided that it must 
cease. A protest was made, and in the reply — the 
bull Cum inter nonnullos, issued 1323 — John asserted 
that the doctrine that Christ possessed nothing was 
contrary to scripture. The Franciscans as a Brother- 
hood were now in open revolt from the pope ; while 
the Spirituals, along with Michael of Cesena, the 
minister-general, and William of Occam, going further, 
supported Lewis of Bavaria, who had been excom- 
municated for assuming the title of King of the 
Romans. In the Protest of Sachsenhausen, inspired 
by Franciscans, Lewis examined the pope's treatment 
of the Order, charged him with heresy, and demanded 
a General Council. A spiritual opposition against the 
papacy had now been created. 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 209 

The battle continued. Michael of Cesena, in a 
" Tractate against the Errors of the Pope," declared 
that popes can err, and advocated the calling of a 
council for the reform of the Church. William of 
Occam entered the contest, and in many writings 
denied the claim of the popes to interfere in politics, 
declared an earthly headship of the Church to be 
unnecessary, and rejected papal infallibility. The 
most powerful of the disputants was Marsiglio of 
Padua, who in the Defensor Pads separated the 
temporal from the spiritual power, and so limited the 
spiritual as to destroy the idea of the papacy. Thus 
again, in the contest regarding the Franciscan Rule, 
were heard the distant sounds of the Reformation. 

In due time the Conventuals returned to papal 
obedience, while the extreme Spirituals, as the Fraticelli 
in Italy, were treated as heretics. The general chapter 
of 1329 deposed Michael of Cesena, and once more 
adopted the theory that the Order had the use with- 
out the ownership of property. William of Occam, 
who had been excommunicated, remained till 1347 
with Lewis of Bavaria, and in 1349, stripped by 
death of many of his companions, and feeling the 
pain of isolation, sought reconciliation with the 
Church. 

Mendicancy in itself was doubtless an economic 
blunder, even a vice, and Wiclif in England openly 
condemned it. Poverty, not licensed mendicancy, 
entered into the ideal of Francis; and certainly 
the combination of possessing property and begging 
alms formed no part of his scheme of life. The 
Conventual was worldly, the Spiritual fanatical, and 
neither followed the founder. It was by no illogical 
14 



210 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

step, however, that the extreme Franciscans, holding 
the true Church to be a religious society, opposed the 
institution with the pope as head. Their dominant 
theory required all clerics to be poor, to be stripped 
of social privileges, and cut off from political concerns. 
Hence, too, there was no contradiction when they 
ranged themselves with the emperor as the reformer 
or destroyer of a Church denying the virtue of 
poverty. 

The persecution of the Spirituals was continued by 
one pope after another. Ultimately they triumphed 
when the Brethren of the Hermitages, strict observants 
of the Rule, obtained confirmation. At the Council 
of Constance, some years after Bernardine of Siena, 
their recognised founder, had attained notoriety, the 
Observantines were formally recognised and their separ- 
ation ratified. The powerful Conventuals objected to 
an arrangement which curtailed their authority, but 
little respect was paid to men with a reputation which 
made Pius II. declare, that while excellent as theologians 
they were little concerned with virtue. At last Leo x., 
to end the strife, gave the Observantines the right to 
select a minister-general. 

The Observantines, in the century before the Re- 
formation, attracted men zealous for austerity of con- 
duct, and their organisation marked a revival in the 
degraded Franciscan Order. Capuchins, Cordeliers, 
Alcantarines were names testifying to the strictness 
with which in varied degree the Rule of St. Francis 
was observed. 

No fierce contest regarding property divided the 
Dominicans, who, shortly after their organisation, 
ceased in all but name to be poor. A chapter held 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 211 

in Paris, 1228, determined the Consuetudines fratrum 
pr dedicator um, according to which houses of moderate 
size were to be occupied, though no other property- 
was to be held. No time elapsed, however, till the 
Dominicans, agreeing with the Conventuals, decided 
that the Brotherhood, exclusive of individuals, had 
rights of possession. This decision produced no zealots 
eager for a harsh ascetic ideal. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Degradation of the Orders — continued 

The decadence of the friars was illustrated in their 

service as ecclesiastical police. That degradation, 

however, was not as gross as the corruption by 

wealth. None the less, it told the tale of lost ideals, 

of spiritual enthusiasm sunk into official activity, of 

devotion to Christ lowered into zeal for the Church. 

The mendicant revival had quickened piety, but it 

had neither elevated clerical life nor purified papal 

policies, though the inefficiency of priests and the 

worldliness of popes had created the need for Francis 

and Dominic. Ugolini's determination to attach the 

Minorites to the Roman Curia, unnecessary in the 

case of the Preachers, resulted in the loss to many 

of the Brothers of that unconventional zeal for the 

cure of souls which the genius of Francis had inspired. 

It became a custom with popes to depute Franciscans 

or Dominicans to deal with local disputes; and while 

it was beneficial to have reliable commissioners, it was 

mean work for evangelists to act as parochial judges, 

and to serve as police prying into the ways of prelates 

and priests. The popes, however, learned the use and 

clung to the advantage of having at their command 

an army to enforce their authority over all clerics in 

Christendom. 

212 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 213 

Never were the mendicants further from the pur- 
poses of the founders of their Orders than when 
acting as servants of the Roman bishops, with their 
schemes of temporal supremacy. In the protracted 
and fierce quarrel between the Church and the Emperor 
Frederick n. friars made themselves conspicuous, and 
unholy was their work. Now they had to preach 
as apologists for the Church's action, now to stir the 
emperor s subjects to rebellion, telling scandalous tales 
to soil his fame. Frederick had taken the crusader s 
vow in the time of Innocent ill., promising to lead 
a host to the East; and this vow he renewed when 
crowned by Honorius in. He was in no hurry, how- 
ever, to seek the Holy Land; and when he set sail 
at last, in 1227, it was only to turn back his ships 
after two or three days on the sea. Gregory ix., the 
successor of Honorius, thereupon passed sentence of 
excommunication. Frederick was little disturbed by 
the thought that he was now a spiritual outcast, and 
after the lapse of a year departed to visit the places 
hallowed by the Saviour's steps. Probably he expected 
to be freed from the ecclesiastical ban when by 
diplomacy or arms he had crowned the crusade with 
success, but his hope was frustrated on learning that 
Gregory had commissioned two Franciscan friars to 
warn loyal churchmen in the East to hold no converse 
with the excommunicated man. The Franciscans, out- 
stripping Frederick, executed their business with 
singular zeal. The emperor was shunned as an out- 
cast from Christ, scorned as an enemy of His cross. 

Returning to Europe, Frederick banished the Fran- 
ciscans from the kingdom of Naples, of which he was 
sovereign, as they were involved in a rebellion. The 



214 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

leaders, indeed, were certain Franciscan and Dominican 
professors of the university. A peace was soon 
negotiated with the Church, but in the enmity from 
rival interests Gregory, in 1239, renewed the excom- 
munication, and henceforth there was open strife 
between the Hohenstaufen and the popes, till the 
House of Swabia fell. The publication of the ban 
was entrusted to the Franciscans, whose minister- 
general, Elias of Cortona, had just sought refuge 
in the imperial Court; and after preaching revolt in 
Guelf and even in Ghibelline cities, they were again 
expelled from the kingdom. 

Gregory died, and in due time Innocent iv., eager in 
his spite to humiliate and in his pride to crush the 
emperor, sent out the friars as tale-bearers. They 
were commissioned to tell how Frederick neglected 
the exercises of religion, was a heretic favouring Mo- 
hammedanism, and as a follower of the Prophet kept 
a harem of Saracen women. Effective scandalmongers 
they proved, and, acting for a pope, were not ashamed. 
Innocent, however, was not content with mere defama- 
tion, and, after renewing the excommunication at 
the Council of Lyons, in 1245, desired to pose as 
another Hildebrand and cast down the mighty. The 
imperial throne was declared vacant by the lips of 
Dominican emissaries, who spoke as for the vicar of 
Christ. Then the prelates of the Rhine, assuming 
the function of the electors of the Holy Roman 
Empire, named, with his own consent, Henry Raspe, 
Landgrave of Thuringia, the king of the Romans. 
The pope requiring confidential agents, chose them 
from the Franciscan and Dominican Brothers, who 
passed from Rome to Germany carrying messages 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 215 

and money; and desiring preachers to declare the 
cause of Henry to be the cause of religion, found them 
among the friars. The papal plot, however, came to 
nothing when Frederick's son, Conrad, defeated the 
Landgrave. Though the scheme failed, the wrath of 
the Bishops of Rome against the House of Swabia 
seemed as if it could not die ; and in 1251, when 
Frederick was dead, the Franciscans were despatched 
in one direction and the Dominicans in another to 
inaugurate a crusade against the prince, who had dared 
to oppose the " clergy's king." 

The political services of the friars were not con- 
fined to the campaign against Frederick. Matthew 
Paris, referring to the year 1236, wrote : " The Fran- 
ciscans and Dominicans were counsellors and envoys 
of princes, and even secretaries to our lord the pope, 
thus securing to themselves too much secular favour " ; 
and again, naming the year 1239, "at that time 
Dominicans and Franciscans were the counsellors 
and special envoys of kings; and as formerly those 
clothed in soft raiment were in kings' houses, so at 
this time those clothed in vile raiment were in the 
houses, the halls, and the palaces of princes." In 
France the Dominicans acted as royal confessors till 
1387, when trouble arose on account of their opposition 
to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the 
Virgin. The same position they occupied in Spain, till 
they were supplanted by the Jesuits. 

The association of the Orders with the university of 
Paris forms a remarkable episode in their history, 
illustrating the masterful and assertive character which 
roused jealousy, and testifying to the spirit which 
neglected poverty for position, and forsook humility 



216 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

for traffic in privilege. Within the first generation of 
the Brotherhoods the members were at strife with the 
leaders of the university of Paris, who sought to 
preserve their independence and to retain the estab- 
lished privileges for the secular clergy. The new 
favourites of Rome were loaded with many benefits, 
and in protest the university authorities laboured first 
to prevent their invasion as teachers, and then to limit 
their seizure of chairs, asserting for the Church of 
France, at a later period, that partial autonomy known 
as Gallicanism, and setting forth the theory of the 
supremacy of the Catholic Church over popes, which 
was informally adopted by the councils of the fifteenth 
century, and widely accepted by thoughtful men in 
the dawn of the Reformation. 

The contest between the mendicants and the univer- 
sity of Paris began in 1229, when, owing to a quarrel 
with the civic authorities, the university was closed. 
The Dominicans, led by Roland of Cremona, using the 
opportunity to their own advantage, not only refused 
to cease from teaching, but welcomed to their classes 
students unattached to their Order. When the uni- 
versity was reopened a second Dominican chair was 
erected, and filled by John of St. Giles, the friend of 
Grosseteste ; while Alexander of Hales, a former master 
among the seculars, having joined the Minorites, began 
to teach in the convent of the Brotherhood. The 
seculars, determined to conserve their privileges, 
limited the licences to doctors, which carried the 
right to lecture. In vain, however, they struggled 
against men with the favour of Rome, and in 1250 a 
papal bull enjoined the chancellor of the university 
to bestow the licence upon such friars as he found 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 217 

qualified. The troubles were not at an end. The 
mendicants refusing, on the occasion of another riot, 
to side with the authorities, were excluded from the 
Society of Masters. Again, they would not take the 
oath of obedience to the statutes, and were expelled 
from the university. An appeal to Rome secured the 
usual help to the friars, but the university in turn 
proved disobedient to the bull requiring the restora- 
tion of the teaching rights. Alexander iv. at last, in 
1255, by the bull Quasi lignum vitce, established the 
mendicants in all the privileges which had been lost, 
and thus for a time rendered them victorious in their 
contest with the secular clergy in the university. 

In the midst of the appeals to Rome a translation of 
The Everlasting Gospel was published in Paris, and as 
the Introduction was ascribed to John of Parma, the 
seculars secured an opportunity of opposing the Fran- 
ciscans, and criticising the whole system of mendicancy. 
They demanded the condemnation of the book, but in 
the controversy into which they entered they were 
defeated. Their champion, William of St. Amour, 
having attacked the Preachers and Minorites, irritat- 
ing them by abusive sermons, was himself in danger 
of being censured or punished when it was known 
that he had written or inspired The Perils of the Last 
Times. In this tract the pope was blamed for allow- 
ing vagrants to preach and hear confessions, and the 
flattery and lying in mendicancy were exposed. The 
friars were described as the precursors of anti-Christ, as 
the false teachers of the last times, and were likened 
unto the Pharisees. They were confronted with the 
precept, " If any man would not work, neither should 
he eat." " It is a work of perfection/' the writer said, 



2i 8 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

" for Christ's sake to leave all and follow Him in doing 
that which is good, not by begging, for this is a thing 
forbidden by the Apostle Paul. He who has renounced 
all earthly goods in order to strive after perfection, 
must either support himself by the labour of his 
own hands or seek his maintenance in a monastery." 
Another argument, not without force, was used : 
" Were it a sin to wear, under befitting circumstances, 
a costly garment, Christ would not have worn that 
seamless coat, which in relation to His poverty must 
have been costly enough." 

Thomas Aquinas, in the treatise Contra impug- 
nantes Dei cultum et religionem, justified the intrusion 
of the Dominicans into the province of the clergy, 
and defended them from charges of immorality. He 
maintained that few of the seculars had studied the 
scriptures, and that pious men did not exist among 
them to serve all the parishes, while, as a contrast, the 
mendicants had destroyed heresy in many places, 
converted infidels, instructed the ignorant, and turned 
the careless to repentance. 

For the Franciscans, Bonaventura appeared, pointing 
in De paupertate Ghristi to the example of Christ as 
a plea for poverty and mendicancy, and assailing in 
the Libellus Apologeticus the seculars for worldliness 
and vice. 

The controversy in defence and attack displayed the 
divisions of the Catholic Church, revealing the degrada- 
tion of the secular clergy, and at the same time the 
tyranny and avarice of the mendicants. 

The king of France submitted St. Amour s tract to 
the pope, and the university, though knowing the 
writing would be condemned at Rome, sent commis- 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 219 

sioners, among whom was St. Amour himself, in its 
defence. The Everlasting Gospel, with the Introduc- 
tion, was the first of the books to be censured, and 
then came the papal pronouncement on The Perils of 
the Last Times, which was declared to be scandalous 
and pernicious. St. Amour was silenced, and the 
seculars lost their champion. The mendicants, on the 
other hand, were undisturbed by the condemnation 
of the new gospel of the extreme Franciscans, and lost 
none of their privileges. 

Summing up the results of the quarrel, the author 
of the Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages 
says : " Till now there had been no reason whatever 
for any hostile feeling against the papacy on the part 
of the university. . . . The alliance between the Holy 
See and the mendicants sowed the seeds of Gallicanism 
in the university which was to be its stronghold." 

It may have been ambition which prompted the 
mendicants to intrude themselves into the university of 
Paris, and certainly they pursued a high-handed policy 
in securing recognition as teachers. Their action, 
however, may bear another interpretation. The Aristo- 
telian renascence threatened danger to the dogma, so 
long as the Church wantonly abused philosophy ; but 
the mendicants had wisdom to see the advantage of 
pressing philosophy into the service of religion. It 
was a noble purpose, then, if the mendicants struggled 
for university recognition, that there might be men to 
rescue Aristotelianism from the hands of the heretics 
and employ it in the cause of truth. Yet whatever 
end in view they had, and it may have been worthy 
of seekers after wisdom, the Dominicans sought 
privileges as if they were not consecrated to poverty, 



220 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

and the Franciscans engaged in strife as if they had 
never meant to conquer the world by love. 

The darkest page in the story of the friars is the 
record of their licentiousness. Legend tells that one 
of the Brothers learned through revelation that the 
devils met in council once a year to devise means 
for destroying the Franciscan Order, and that three 
special means were always favoured, "familiarity 
with women, reception of unprofitable members, and 
handling of money." There were indeed men, through- 
out the whole history of the Orders, who, quickly 
losing their pious enthusiasm, or never having had 
either piety or enthusiasm, found in mendicancy oppor- 
tunities for vice, and dishonoured the rank to which 
they had attained. Bonaventura's many warnings 
to his Brothers to keep themselves unspotted from 
sensuality showed the extent and gravity of their 
offences. Other men were tempted into the Orders 
by a love of wealth, which condemned their profession. 
The unprofitable servants were many, and gave to the 
Brotherhoods that evil reputation, from which the 
good men who had taken the name and had the mind 
of Francis or Dominic could not be saved. George 
Buchanan, in the verse of Franciscanus, set forth that 
those who entered the Order were the law-breaker, 
the ignoramus, the gambler, the voluptuary, the 
wretch diseased in mind and body. Erasmus, lashing 
the mendicants with his scorn, aided the cause of the 
Reformation. His pictures of the Franciscans shows 
the base condition to which they had been lowered 
by lust, greed, ignorance, and pride. 

" St. Francis," he wrote in one of his epistles, " came 
lately to me in a dream and thanked me for chas- 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 221 

tising them. He was not dressed as they now paint 
him. His frock was brown, the wool undyed as it 
came from the sheep; the hood was not peaked, but 
hung behind to cover the head in bad weather. The 
cord was a piece of rope from a farmyard ; the frock 
itself did not reach his ankles. He had no fine shoes. 
His feet were bare. Of the five wounds I saw not 
a trace. . . . They (the friars) go about begging with 
forged testimonials, which serve for a passport, and now 
they have made the notable discovery that a rich man, 
alarmed for his sins, may buy a share in the merits of 
the Order if he is buried in the Franciscan habit. They 
demand admission at private houses, to come and go as 
they please, invited or uninvited, and the owner dares 
not refuse. What slavery is this ! A man with young 
sons and daughters, and a wife not past her prime, must 
take a stranger into his family whether he likes it or 
not — Spaniard, Italian, French, English, Irish, Scotch, 
German, or Indian — and the secrets of his household 
are exposed to all the world. Wise men know that in 
such a multitude not all are pure. Monks are often 
sent on their travels because they have misconducted 
themselves ; and, even supposing them sober and chaste, 
they are made of the same flesh as other men. I have 
heard many stories of what has happened in such 
circumstances. They pretend that they have no other 
means of living. Why should they live at all ? What 
is the use of these mendicant vagabonds ? Not many 
of them teach the gospel, and if they must needs 
travel, they have houses of their own Order to go to." 
The fulness of time was reached for a religious 
revolution in the sixteenth century, and successors of 
the men who quickened piety in the thirteenth century, 



222 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

and widened the bounds of Christianity by heroic 
missions, were of those who made reformation the one 
thing needful for the Church. They were not sinners 
above all men, but professing much were accordingly 
judged. Many were luxurious who had taken the vow 
of poverty, unclean when they should have been pure, 
haughty instead of lowly, and the good deeds of the 
Orders were overshadowed by the sins. Had Dominic 
come back to earth he would have chastised his 
Brothers ; and Francis, had he returned, would have 
found a mission to lead his friars to Christ. 

At the Reformation the Orders were not swept 
away, but before the day of Martin Luther their glory 
had departed, and within the Roman Church the 
Jesuits were to take the place of distinction. Ignatius 
Loyola kept the example of Francis and Dominic 
before his eyes, and it is recorded that he asked 
himself: Quid si ego hoc agerem quod fecit beatus 
Franciscus, quid si hoc quod beatus Dominicus ? — What 
if I should do as St. Francis, what if I should do as 
St. Dominic did ? 

Protestantism roused the Dominicans to fierceness, 
and preserved them for many years to notable service 
in the Church. Their passion for the Inquisition 
burned again, and Spain under Philip II. licensed their 
carnage. The Cardinals Caraffa and Burgos, members 
of the Dominican Order, counselled the pope to 
establish the Inquisition in Rome, as the one sure 
means of crushing throughout Italy the spirit of 
inquiry, which was touching established doctrines. 
"As St. Peter," said Caraffa, "vanquished the first 
heresiarchs nowhere but in Rome, so ought Peter's 
successors to trample down all the heresies of the 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 223 

world in Rome." The Inquisition was set up and did 
its work with ruthless vengeance, ending the religious 
revival, such as it was, which was quickened at the 
renascence of letters and fostered in some measure by 
the Protestantism of Germany. Italy was purged of 
heresy. " Nearly the whole Order of Franciscans," 
Ranke reports, " were obliged to submit to retracta- 
tions." The democratic character of the Minorites, 
illustrated throughout the whole course of their history, 
led them away from steadfast opinion, and as an 
Order they had no help to offer the Church in its 
time of danger. 

Pope Paul iv. instituted the Feast of St. Dominic, 
but there was no tribute to the name of Francis. The 
old rivalry of the Orders perished in Italy as the 
Franciscans succumbed to the coercive power of the 
conquering Dominicans. There was indeed a recru- 
descence not of the tender pity and winning love of 
Francis, but of the cruel zeal which made the 
Franciscan an Inquisitor, in the Minorite who at the 
Diet of Worms, in 1545, addressed the emperor. The 
preacher, painting the Lutherans as monsters, turned 
to Charles, crying : " Now, O emperor ! — now is the 
time to fulfil your duty ; enough of trifling, enough of 
loitering on the way ; long ago you should have done 
the work : God has blessed you with power ; He has 
raised you on high to be the defender of His Church. 
Up, then ! Call out your armies ! Smite and destroy 
the accursed generation ; it is a crime to endure longer 
these venomous wretches crawling in the sunshine, and 
venting their poison over all things." The voice of 
the friar was the voice of one crying to an emperor 
impotent to stem a current of the ages ; and passion, 



224 FRANCIS AND DOMINIC 

inflamed by taunts of satirists and condemnations of 
reformers, went out of the Order, when it died in this 
man. 

The dissolution of the monasteries was the death- 
blow of mendicancy in England. A regenerated spirit, 
but more probably confirmed apathy, dictated the 
submission of the Franciscans to the king. They pro- 
fessed to be convinced " that the perf eccion of Christian 
livyng dothe not consiste in dome ceremonyes, weryng 
of a grey coatte, disgeasing our selffes aftyr straunge 
f assions, dokynges, nodyngs, and bekynges, in gurdyng 
owr selffes wythe a gurdle full of knots, and other like 
papisticall ceremonyes, wherin we have byn moost 
pryncipally practysed and misse-lyd in tymes past ; 
but the very tru waye to please God, and to live a 
tru Christian man, wythe owte all ypocrasie and 
fayned dissimulacion, is sinceerly declaryd unto us by 
oure Master Christe, his evangelists and apostoles." 

The yielding of the Franciscans to the Inquisition in 
Italy, and in England to the Reformation, was 
significant of the weakness of the Order ; and when 
the milder manners and gentler customs of modern 
centuries rejected the use of violence for the protection 
of the dogma, the Dominicans were left as men without 
a purpose. The Brotherhoods, existing to-day and 
still recognised by the Church, are relics of societies 
which once were profitable in Christendom. Francis 
loved his Lord, and therefore served his fellow-men ; 
and the Minorites, led by his spirit, carried Christ to 
the hearts of the weary and heavy laden. Dominic, 
eager to vanquish error, laboured as a guardian of the 
faith, and the Friars-Preachers, filled with his zeal, 
guarded the dogma as the truth of God. The kingdom 



DEGRADATION OF THE ORDERS 225 

of heaven was seen in the midst of men, while the 
power of these saints endured. But the advancing 
years beheld lust joined with love and lies with truth, 
saw the ruin of high aims, and witnessed a harvest of 
ignoble traditions. The Franciscan wandered far 
away from the Poor Penitent of Assisi, and the 
Dominican from the Master of the Sacred Palace. 



15 



LITERATURE 

The following books may be consulted on the subject 
of this work : — 

Speculum perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis legenda 
antiquissima auctore fratre Leone. Nunc primum edidit 
Paul Sabatier. Collection cle documents pour Vhistoire 
religieuse et litteraire du moyen age, torn. i. 

Fratris Francisci Bartholi de Assisio traetatus de indulgentia 
S. Marise de Portiuncula. Nunc primum integre edidit 
Paul Sabatier. Accedunt varia documenta. Collection 
d'etudes et de documents pour Vhistoire religieuse et 
litteraire du moyen age, torn. ii. 

Speculum Vitae S. Francisci et sociorum ejus. 

Fioretti di S. Francesco. 

The Little Flowers of Saint Francis : English translation of 
the "Fioretti," by T. W. Arnold. 

The Mirror of Perfection : English translation of the " Spec- 
ulum perfectionis," by Sebastian Evans. 

Sabatier, Vie de S. Francois d' Assise. 

(English translation, by L. S. Houghton.) 

Un noveau chapitre de la vie de Saint Francois d' Assise 

{Revue Chretienne, 1896). 

Sur des Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ecrites en 1216. 

(Memoires de l'Academie Eoyale de Bruxelles, 1849.) 

Kenan, Nouvelles Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse. 

Lacordaire, Vie de Saint Dominique, prec^dee du memoire 
pour le retablissement en France de Fordre des freres 
precheurs. 

Helyot, Histoire des ordres monastiques religieux et 
militaires. 

Wadding, Annales Minorum. 

Acta Sanctorum. 

227 



228 LITERATURE 

Analecta Bollandiana. 

Dollinger, Beitrage zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters. 

Muller, Die Anfange des Minoritenordens und der Buss- 

bruderschaften. 
Christen, Leben des heiligen Franciscus von Assisi. 
Ozanam, Les poetes franciscains en Italie au treizieme siecle. 
Thode, Francis von Assisi und die Anfange der Kunst der 

Renaissance in Italien. 
Hase, Franz von Assisi. Ein Heiligenbild. 
Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana. 
Yillemain, Histoire de Gregoire vu. 
Gebhart, LTtalie Mystique. 
Kiezler, Die literarischen Widersacher der Papste zur Zeit 

Ludwig des Baiers. 
Kuenen, Hibbert Lecture. 

Dante, Commedia : translation by E. H. Plumptre. 
Newman, Historical Sketches. 
Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. 
Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire. 
Morison, The Life of Saint Bernard. 
Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography. 
Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. 

Sacerdotal Celibacy. 

Auricular Confession and Indulgences. 

Superstition and Force. 

Pearson, The Ethic of Free Thought. 
Ruskin, Mornings in Florence. 
Arnold, Essays in Criticism. 

Poems. 

Lecky, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. 
Ranke, The Popes of Rome. 

Lord Lindsay, Sketches of the History of the Christian Art. 
Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 

Empire 
Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (Camden Society). 
Yaughan, The Life and Labours of S. Thomas of Aquin. 
Hampden, Bampton Lecture. 

Hume Brown, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer. 
Knox Little, St. Francis of Assisi : his Times, Life, and 

Work. 



LITERATURE 229 

Adderley, Francis, the Little Poor Man of Assisi. 
Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic. 
Drane, The History of St. Dominic. 
Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages. 
Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus. 

Lectures on the Council of Trent. 

Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. 

Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Reformation. 

Early Renaissance in England. 

Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders. 

Fisher, The Medieval Empire. 

Oliphant, Francis of Assisi. 

Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. 

Chaucer's Pardoner and the Pope's Pardoners (Chaucer 

Society). 
Maitland, The Dark Ages. 
Facts and Documents illustrative of the History, 

Doctrine, and Rites of the Ancient Albigenses and 

Waldenses. 
Maclear, A History of Christian Missions during the Middle 

Ages. 
Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints. 
SYMONDsand Gordon, The Story of Perugia (Medieval Towns). 
Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars, and other Historical Essays. 
Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 
Anthony Wood, Survey of the Antiquities of the City of 

Oxford, vol. ii.; Churches and Religious Houses (Oxford 

Historical Society). 
Little, The Greyfriars in Oxford (Oxford Historical Society). 
Day, Monastic Institutions : their Origin, Progress, Nature, 

and Tendency. 
Milman, History of Latin Christianity. 
Lechler, John Wycliffe and his English Precursors. 
Church Histories — Fleury, Mosheim, Neander, Gieseler, 

Kurtz, Robertson. 
Neander, Lectures on the History of Christian Dogmas. 
Histories of Philosophy — Maurice, Ueberweg, Erdmann, Win- 

delband. 
Church, Saint Anselm. 
R^musat, Saint Anselme de Cantorbery. 



230 LITERATURE 

Haur^au, Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique. 
Aquinas, Opera. 
Bona ventura, Opera. 
Duns Scotus, Opera. 

Francois D'Assise — I. Vie de S. Francois, par le R. P. 
Le6pold de Cherance. II. S. Francois apres sa Mort — 

(a) L'Ordre de S. Francois, par le R. P. Henri de Grezes ; 

(b) Les Fils de S. Francois, par le T. R. P. Ubald de 
Chanday ; (c) S. Francois dans PArt, par M . 



INDEX 



Abelabd, 11, 164, 167, 176. 

Abingdon, 127-28. 

Abyssinia, 118. 

Africa, 101. 

Agnellus, 125, 128, 131. 

Agnes of Meran, 12. 

Aix, 147. 

Alans, 119. 

Albano, 170. 

Albertus Magnus, 117, 125, 172-74, 

177, 179, 181, 184, 191. 
Albigenses, 86-7, 89, 94, 100, 113, 

143. 
Alcantarines, 210. 
Alexander n., 87. 
„ in., 85. 

iv., 41,58, 119, 205,217. 
VI., 201. 
Alexander of Hales, 54, 117, 169, 

172, 191, 204, 216. 
Al varus Pelagius, 200. 
Amalric of Bene, 168-69. 
America, 118. 
Ancona, 34. 
Angelico, Fra, 135. 
Anselm, 166. 
Anthony Wood, 122-23. 
Antoninus, 135. 
Antony of Padua, 66, 106. 120-21, 

202. 
Apostolici, 31. 
Apulia, 37. 
Ara Coeli, 131. 

Arabic philosophers, 163-64, 168. 
Aragon, 12, 93, 147, 158. 



Archipelago, 207. 

Arezzo, 143. 

Aristotelians, 163, 173, 219. 

Aristotle, 164, 166, 168-69, 170-74, 

177-79, 185-86, 190. 
Aries, 147. 
Armagh, 132. 
Armenians, 119. 
Arnold of Brescia, 11, 31, 39, 95. 

,, of Citeaux, 87. 
Asia, 131. 
Assisi, 16, 18, 22, 27, 32-33, 35, 

40, 46, 61, 70, 76, 85, 120, 225. 
Augustine, 5, 97, 164, 171. 
Augustinians, 36, 120, 177. 
Avignon, 96, 132, 201. 
Avignonet, 156. 

Babylon, 38. 
Baronius, 166. 

Bartholomew Abbizzi, 60, 68. 
Bartolomeo, Fra, 135. 
Basel, 201. 
Baur, 111. 
Beatrice, 77. 
Belgium, 83. 
Benedict xi., 148. 

„ St., 22, 77. 
Benedictines, 112. 
Berengar Taloni, 208. 
Bernard of Quintavalle, 25, 28. 

St., 10-11, 31, 84, 112, 
164, 167-68. 
Bernardine of Siena, 210. 
Bernardone, Pietro, 16-7, 85. 



231 



232 



INDEX 



Bethlehem, 75. 

Blasio, St., 131. 

Boethius, 165. 

Bohemia, 11, 47, 189. 

Bollandists, 92. 

Bologna, 42, 54, 55, 101-2, 104-5, 

108, 118, 121. 
Bonaventura, 35, 38, 42, 60, 79, 

113, 130, 170-72, 191, 193, 196, 

200, 218, 220. 
Boniface vin., 6, 8, 71, 115, 149, 

150, 153, 195, 198, 207. 
Brewer, Prof., 136. 
Brigitta, St., 194. 
Brindisi, 34. 
Bristol, 137. 
Britain, 131. 
Buddha, 80. 
Bulgarians, 119. 
Burgos, Cardinal, 222. 

C^sarius of Spires, 202. 

Cahors, 91. 

Calaruega, 81, 105. 

Calixtus II., 9, 87. 

Calmaldolese, 10. 

Cambalu, 119. 

Canossa, 6. 

Canterbury, 123, 126. 

Capuchins, 210. 

Caraffa, Cardinal, 222. 

Carcassonne, 90-1. 

Carthusians, 10. 

Cassian, 82. 

Castelnau, 87-9. 

Castille, 97, 107, 158. 

Cathari, 86, 89, 90, 119, 122, 139. 

Catharine of Siena, 60, 109. 

Catherine of Aragon, 63. 

Chalcedon, 146. 

Charlemain, 2-3, 53, 164. 

Charles n. of Spain, 159. 

Chaucer, 192. 

Cimabue, 75. 

Cistercians, 10, 29, 112, 177. 

Clairvaux, 112. 

Clara, St., 32, 58, 62, 76-7, 103. 

Clarissas, 40, 57. 

Clemently., 185. 

v., 149, 206. 



Clement vi., 119, 149, 198-99. 
Cluny, Monastery of, 3-4. 
Coelestine in., 11, 12, 29. 

v. 207. 
Cologne, 124,''l74,189. 
Columba, St., 73. 
Columbus, 119. 
Conrad of Marburg, 93, 157. 

,, of Swabia, 215. 
Constance, 201, 210. 
Constantine the Great, 9. 
Constantinople, 12, 29, 168, 203-4. 
Conventuals, 203-4, 206, 209-11. 
Corah, 130. 
Cordeliers, 210. 
Cordes, 155. 
Cornhill, 126. 
Cremona, 103-4, 157. 
Cresentius, 203. 
Cumans, 119. 

Dalmatia, 147. 

Damian, St., 21-2, 40-1, 62. 

Damietta, 37. 

Dante, 18-9, 40-50, 56, 63, 70-1, 
75, 77, 93, 117, 153-54, 170, 177, 
200. 

David of Dinant, 168-69. 

Denmark, 118. 

Dominic, St., 8, 27, 49, 51, 60, 64, 
77, 81-110, 111-14, 117, 120, 
122, 133, 135, 139-40, 146, 151, 
160-61, 191-92, 195, 199, 210, 
212, 220, 222-24. 

Dominicans (Friars-Preachers), 45, 
54-5, 59, 63-4, 84, 92, 97-8, 
101, 104-5, 114, 117-19, 122-26, 
128, 135, 141-44, 146-50, 155- 
56, 158-59, 161, 172, 175, 177, 
187, 189, 191-92, 195-98, 200, 
207, 211-12, 214-19, 222-25. 

Dominic of Silos, 81. 

Dover, 125-26. 

Dunbar, 192. 

Duns Scotus, 117, 178-80, 181 
183, 188, 191. 

Durand of Huesca, 29, 96. 

Ebbe, St., 128. 

Eccelino da Romano, 120. 



INDEX 



233 



Eccleston, 25, 129. 

Eckhart, 189-91. 

Edward in., 123. 

Edward's, St., 123. 

Egidius, Brother, 34. 

Egypt, 101. 

Elias of Cortona, 37, 39, 46, 52, 

59, 61-2, 121, 195, 201-3, 

214. 
Elizabeth of Hungary, 56, 157- 

58. 
England, 6, 83, 85-7, 122, 127- 

30, 132, 137, 142, 193, 203, 209. 

224. 
English, 116. 

Erasmus, 187, 189, 192. 220. 
Europe, 56, 120, 213. 
Eustorgius, St., 157. 
Ethiopians, 119. 

Fanjeatjx, 90. 

"Fecamp, 125. 

Felix Guzman, 81. 

Filippo Paternon, 143. 

Fioretti of St. Francis, 25-6, 32, 
57, 61, 66, 70, 78, 104. 

Florence, 143, 149, 156-57. 

France, 41, 79, 82, 86, 89, 92, 
96-7, 101, 106, 120, 131, 138, 
140, 144, 147, 185, 215-16. 

Francis Bernard Delitiosi, 60. 
„ St., 6, 8,16-80, 85,101-8, 
111, 113, 115, 117, 119-21, 126, 
129-30, 135, 138, 170, 191-92, 
194, 199-206, 209-10, 212, 214, 
220, 223-24. 

Franciscans (Friars Minor, Minor- 
ites, Penitents of Assisi), 23, 25, 
28-9, 32, 34, 36, 42-3, 46, 55-9, 
64, 70, 84-5, 102, 114, 118-19, 
122, 125, 127-31, 136-37, 146-47, 
149, 153, 156, 160, 161, 169-70, 
172, 178, 185, 187, 189, 193-95, 
197, 200, 204-5, 208, 210, 212-18, 
220, 222-23, 225. 

Franks, 2. 

French, 116. 

Fraticelli, 209. 

Frederick 1. (Barbarossa), 2, 9-10, 
31. 



Frederick 11., 11, 50, 141-42, 147, 

203, 213, 215. 
Frideswyde's, St., 124. 

Gall, St., 73. 

Genevieve, St., 125. 

George Buchanan, 192, 220. 
,, St., Church of, 62. 

Georgians, 119. 

Germans, 116, 157. 

Germany, 2, 79, 83, 97, 106, 118, 
130, 158, 189, 202, 214, 223. 

Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino, 
205. 

Giacopone di Todi, 70, 79, 111. 

Gibbon, 86, 139. 

Gilbert de Fraxineto, 122-23. 

Giotto, 18, 27, 58, 75-6. 

Giovanni di Salerno, 144. 
,, Parenti, 202. 

Goethe, 72. 

Goths, 119. 

Greece, 207. 

Greeks, 119. 

Gregorovius, 131. 

Gregory vn. (Hildebrand), 1, 3-8, 
10-11, 13, 15, 30, 154, 
214. 
,, ix. (Ugolini), 36-7, 39, 
41, 43, 45, 48, 52, 58, 
62, 64, 105, 107, 128, 
143-45, 169, 192, 194- 
95, 201, 203, 209, 213- 
14. 
„ x., 119, 205. 

Grosseteste, 124, 128-29, 216. 

Guido, 157. 

Guillem Arnauld, 155-56. 

Hadrian iv., 6, 9-10, 31. 

Hallam, 112. 

Harnack, 71. 

Hase, 59. 

Hayti, 119. 

Hefele, 141. 

Heine, 20. 

Henry 11. of England, 6. 

„ in. (Emperor), 3. 

„ iv. (Emperor), 5, 6, 154. 

,, v. (Emperor), 8, 9. 



234 



INDEX 



Henry the Deacon, 84. 

,, of Cologne, 124. 
Hermitages, Brethren of, 210. 
Hildegard, 193. 
Hohenstaufen, 214. 
Holland, 80. 

Holy Land, 23, 118, 213. 
Honorius III., 23, 52, 88, 92, 98- 

100, 105, 107, 196, 213. 
Honorius iv., 198. 
Hugh of Yienne, 135. 
Humbert de Romanis, 161. 
Hungarians, 119. 
Hungary, 12, 82, 106, 118. 

Iberians, 119. 
Ignatius Loyola, 222. 
Ilchester, 184. 
Indians, 119. 
Ingeburga, 11-2. 
Innocent II., 11, 87. 

III., 1, 6, 8, 10-5, 27-9, 
32, 36, 43, 82-3, 87, 
89, 92, 97-8, 107, 
139, 142, 154, 161, 
168, 176, 196, 213. 
iv., 48, 131, 147-48, 

197, 205-7, 214. 
v., 135. 
,, viii., 153. 

Ireland, 6, 130. 
Isabell de Bulbeck, 124. 
Isabella of Spain, 158. 
Italy, 2, 6, 9, 17, 20, 30, 41,83, 
86, 100, 103, 120, 130, 147, 
223-24. 

Jacoba, Lady, 58. 
Jacobites, Eastern, 118-19. 
Jacobus de Voragine, 135. 
Jacques de Vitry, 23, 36, 38. 
Janus, 76. 
Jerome, 58. 

„ St., 77. 
Jerusalem, 22, 119. 
Jessop, 137. 
Jesuits, 215, 222. 
Jewish- Alexandrian schools, 165. 
Jews, 93, 124, 159. 
Joanna of Aza, 81. 



Joannes de Monte Corvino, 119. 
Joachim of Flora, 29, 168, 204-5, 

207. 
John xxi., 198. 

xxii., 60, 204, 206-8. 

Friar, 136. 

of Capella, 42. 

of England, 6, 12. 

of Parma, 204-5, 217. 

of St. Alban, 125. 

of St. Giles, 216. 

of St. Paul, 28, 36. 

of Vicenza, 121, 135. 

Scotus Erigina, 165. 
Jordan, 92, 101, 118, 124, 172- 

73. 
Julius II., 201. 

Kamel, 38. 
Kubla Kahn, 119. 
Kuenen, 80. 

Lacordaire, 93. 

Landolf, Count of, 174. 

Langland, 192. 

Languedoc, 82, 84, 86-7, 93, 97, 

139-40, 145, 151. 
Laningen, 172. 
Laurence, Brother, 125, 136. 
,, of Beauvais, 126. 
St., 123. 
Lateran Church, 2. 
,, Council ii., 87. 
in., 87. 

iv., 12-3, 29, 
36, 93, 95-7, 
143-44, 169, 
196. 
v., 200. 
Laura, 71. 
Lecky, 142, 160. 
Legnano, 9. 
Leox., 195, 200, 210. 
,, xiii., 48. 
,, Brother, 78-9, 202. 
Leon, 12. 

Lewis of Bavaria, 204, 208-9. 
Limoges, 95. 
Liverpool, 137. 
Llorente, 140. 



INDEX 



235 



Lombards, 2, 37. 
Lombardy, 106, 122, 152. 
London, 123, 126-27, 137. 
Lord Bacon, 136. 
,, Lindsay, 58. 
Louis, St., 49. 
Lucca, 149. 
Lucius in., 85. 
Lully, Raymond, 177-78. 
Luther, 191, 222. 
Lutherans, 223. 
Lynn, 137. 
Lyons, 214. 

Machiavelli, 114. 
Madrid, 107, 159. 
Mahomet, 37. 
Manichseans, 86. 
Marco Polo, 119. 
Marsiglio of Padua, 209. 
Masseo, Brother, 32. 
Matthew Arnold, 69, 71, 114. 
,, Brother, 125. 
Paris, 192, 215. 
Mexico, 118. 

Michael of Cesena, 208-9. 
Milan, 146-47. 
Milton, 64. 
Montefeltro, 63. 
Montpellier, 82. 
Moors, 93. 
Motley, 141. 
Morocco, 37, 118, 120. 
Mosheim, 152. 
Murcia, 120. 
Muret, 91, 96. 
Muscovites, 119. 

Naples, 213. 

Narbonne, 87-8, 90, 147-48, 

155. 
Nestorians, 118-19. 
Netherlands, 141. 
New Granada, 118. 
Newman, Cardinal, 120. 
Nicholas, St., 126. 

,, Convent of, 105. 
,, in., 205, 208. 

iv., 48, 100, 135, 148. 
Normandy, 97. 



Norwich, 137. 
Nubians, 119. 

Observantines, 210. 

Octavian, 131. 

Oliver, 53. 

Osma, 82, 105. 

Osney, 124. 

Otto of Brunswick, 11. 

,, the Great, 1-3, 10. 
Oxford, 25, 56, 99, 118, 122, 124, 

127-30, 131-33, 178, 182, 185. 
Ozanam, 70. 

Pacifico, Brother, 68. 

Padua, 121, 148, 172. 

Palencia, 82. 

Palestine, 118. 

Paris, 99, 101. 117-18, 125, 131, 

137, 168-69, 178, 182, 186, 189, 

211, 216-17, 219. 
Paschal 11., 8. 
Patarines, 30, 86. 
Paul, St., 86, 218. 

,, iv., 223. 
Paula, 71. 
Paulicianism, 86. 
Pavia, 172. 
Pekin, 119. 
Persia, 117. 
Peru, 118. 
Perugia, 18, 98. 
Peter de Brueys, 83-4. 

,, de Rupibus, 132. 

,, John Olivi, 60, 207. 

,, of Tarentaise, 135. 

,, St., 200, 222. 

,, the Lombard, 167-69. 
Petrarch, 71. 
Pharisees, 172, 217. 
Philip 11. 222. 

,, Augustus, 11, 12. 

„ Brother, 41, 43. 

,, of Swabia, 11. 

„ the Fair, 142. 
Pica, 16. 

Piero da Verna, 156-57. 
Pierre Cella, 91. 
Pietro di Catana, 46. 
Pisa, 60, 143. 



236 



INDEX 



Pius II., 210. 

Plato, 160, 164-65, 171. 

Platonism, 165, 190. 

Neo-, 165, 168, 190. 
Poland, 12, 118. 
Poor Catholics, 29, 96. 
Porphyry, 165. 
Portiuncula (St. Mary of the 

Angels), 22-4, 26, 28, 33, 40, 

61, 77, 195. 
Portugal, 12, 130. 
Prescott, 141. 
Prouille, 88, 93, 97-8, 102, 

125. 
Provence, 16, 17, 106. 
Prussians, 100. 
Puritans, 85. 
Pyrenees, 82. 

Quentin, St., Dean of, 125. 

Raimund di Pennaforti, 119. 

Ranke, 223. 

Raoul, 87. 

Raphael, 75. 

Raspe, Henry, 214-15. 

Ravenna, 49. 

Raymond d'Alfaro, 156. 
Lully, 177-78. 
,, of Toulouse, 89, 142. 

Regensburg, 173. 

Reginald, Brother, 102. 

Renan, 59, 64, 74, 79. 

Rhine, 214. 

Richard of Devon, 127. 

,, of Ingworth, 126-27. 

Rieti, 60-1. 

Rivo Torto, 32-3. 

Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford, 124. 

Roger Bacon, 117, 184-86, 191. 

Roland, 53. 

,, of Cremona, 216. 

Romagnuolo, 106. 

Romans, 131. 

Rome, 2, 5, 13, 27-9, 31, 34, 42, 
64, 82-4, 97-8, 103, 115, 131, 
139-42, 146-47,149, 150, 158-59, 
169, 185, 189, 194-96, 200-1, 
214, 216-17, 222-23. 

Ruggieri Calcagni, 146, 157. 



Ruskin, 68, 74. 
Russians, 119. 

Sabatier, 73. 
Sabina, St., 99, 108. 
Sachsenhausen, 208. 
Salerno, 7. 
Saracens, 119. 
Savelli, 99. 
Savona, 6. 
Savonarola, 136. 
Saxony, 189. 
Scholastica, 77. 
Sciffi, 40. 
Scotists, 187. 
Scotland, 130. 
Segovia, 101, 106. 
Sens, 146. 
Seville, 158. 
Shakespere, 136. 
Shrewsbury, 137. 
Sicily, 37, 71. 
Siena, 130. 

Silvester II., 166, 186. 
„ Brother, 32. 
Simon deMontfort, 87, 91-2, 94, 140. 
Sir David Lindsay, 192. 
,, Launfal, 20. 
Sixtusiv., 60, 117, 158, 170. 

„ v., 92, 157. 

„ St., 99. 
Socrates, 181. 
Spain, 41, 82, 93, 99, 101, 105-6, 

130, 140, 159-60, 215, 222. 
Spaniards, 116. 
Speculum Vitse, 130. 
Spoleto, 18-9. 
Stephen Langton, 122-23. 
St. James, Convent of, 125. 
Strasburg, 189. 
Surrey, 182. 
Sutri, 3. 

Swabia, 172, 207, 214-15. 
Syria, 37. 

Tartars, 119. 
Tauler, 191. 
Tertiaries, 47-50. 
Teutons, 6. 
Thode, 79. 



INDEX 



237 



Thomas Aquinas, 92, 117, 125, 135, 
160, 164, 172, 174-81, 
187-88, 191, 196, 200-1, 
204, 218. 
,, of Celano, 33, 46, 70. 
,, of Eccleston, 125. 

Thomists, 177, 187. 

Three Companions, 116. 

Thuringia, 189, 214. 

Titian, 157. 

Torquemada, 158-59, 201. 

Toulouse, 88, 91, 94, 99, 102, 142, 
144, 155, 178. 

Tours, 87. 

Trivettus, 123. 

Troubadours, 17-8, 65, 68, 72. 

Tunis, 120. 

Turks 119. 

Tuscany, 37, 56, 146, 152. 

Ubeetino of Casale, 207. 
Umbria, 16, 28, 34, 71. 
Urban 11., 8, 10. 



Vallombrosians, 10. 
Venice, 104, 118. 
Verna, 56. 
Verona, 85, 122. 
Vicenza, 149. 
Vienne, 149. 

Wadding, 29, 178. 

Waldenses, 28, 32, 84-5, 87, 95-6, 

150. 
Waldo, 85. 
Walter of Brienne, 18. 

„ of St. Victor, 168. 
Wiclif, 63, 134, 209. 
William of Occam, 181-84, 18 6 
191, 204, 208, 219. 
of St. Amour, 174, 217- 
19. 
Worms, 9, 223. 

York, 137. 

ZlCHORI, 119. 



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